Wolf at the Door
by Scribbler
Summary: Having returned to Radiant Garden, Leon and his friends think they've earned a break. However, when one of them is possessed by an evil spirit haunting their old home, things get deadly. To survive they must answer an impossible question: how do you kill someone who's already dead? Moreover, how do you do it without killing the possessed person too? Aerith/Cloud, Tifa/Cloud.
1. Reclaiming Radiant Garden

**Disclaimer:** Not mine – in triplicate!

**A/N:** So here it is. Finally, the sequel to _The Most Dangerous Game_ and _Tripych_, and the third part of the trilogy I never actually planned to write. Hope it was worth the wait.

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_**Wolf at the Door **_

© Scribbler, January 2010.

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**1. Reclaiming Radiant Garden**

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The problem with returning to Hollow Bastion after so long was that everything was different, and yet in many ways nothing had changed at all. The castle was still the castle, the buildings were still arranged in the same pattern, and objects that had been dropped in that last hasty departure were still exactly where you'd left them. It was disturbingly easy to find yourself wandering down familiar paths, only to discover something alien at the end.

Leon wished that was the case this time. He would rather have found another of Maleficent's little surprises than what he suspected was behind these doors. He concentrated on the steady tramp of his own feet, and the counterpoint of Yuffie's lighter footsteps. Where he walked in a straight line, she capered about, pirouetting, kicking up her heels and generally acting like a little kid being taken to the fair, instead of a seasoned freedom fighter in a dungeon.

"Do you think a song might lighten the mood?" she asked. "Or are you really wedded to that whole 'speak not, cheerful maiden, for my woe is infinite and must not be interrupted by merry ditties that might make me smile' thing you've got going on?"

Leon gritted his teeth. "This isn't a sightseeing tour –"

"Actually, that's exactly what it is. So nyer." Yuffie waggled her fingers in her ears at him.

"Very mature."

"Was that sarcasm or a compliment?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I'm hungry. Can we hurry this up? Aerith said she was making enchiladas for lunch. If you take ages over this we won't be there in time, which will mean Cid eats my share, which will mean you owe me, which will mean I'll have to eat _yours_, which will mean you'll starve, which will mean you'll be even grouchier than usual."

"It'll take as long as it takes," Leon replied evenly.

Yuffie pouted. "Then I hope you like an empty tummy."

In the months after their return, the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee had systematically gone through Maleficent's former stronghold, taking stock of the changes made since they'd fled the place over a decade earlier. At first it was unbelievable to think this had once been their home. The castle pulsed with dark magic of the sort that turned your stomach when you were still miles away. By the time you got up the reverse-waterfalls you were practically tossing your cookies over the battlements, and that was before you'd even got through the doors to the inside, where the _real _nasty stuff lay in wait.

"You lived _there_?" Yuffie had said when she first saw it. Since she had been part of the envoy from Wutai, and so only visiting when the Heartless attacked, Radiant Garden had not been her home. It wasn't as much a part of her history as it was for the others.

"It was a lot nicer at the time," Aerith had replied, and Leon had held his tongue.

Originally they had stuck to the town surrounding the base of the castle, making it habitable again after years of neglect. Maleficent's living minions, unlike her Heartless, were a slovenly bunch. The town was in such disrepair it was easy to ignore the nauseating throb of the castle and pretend the reason they hadn't started cleaning _that_ up was because they had more pressing matters.

Yeah, right.

Inwardly, they all knew the real reason, and it wasn't anything to do with feeling sick. Not physically, at least. It was hard to revisit the place where all your worst recurring nightmares had been born. In truth, most of them hadn't really thought they'd ever return, but when Sora drove out Maleficent and made it possible … well, the phrase 'working up to it' had never been better used.

_Sora…_

Leon glanced at the walls. He reached out briefly to touch them, as if to make sure they were real. He wasn't usually given to sentimentalism. Life had made him the master of sharp-edges, and he had more than a few you couldn't see until you got to know him. Yet where Sora was concerned he found himself slipping into sentimentality more and more. 'Becoming human again' Yuffie called it, but he disagreed. He had never stopped being human, only cut himself off from all feelings but anger and determination to defeat the Heartless. It was more like he was rediscovering the human parts of him he had deemed unnecessary and locked away a long time ago. Sora's keyblade was good for unlocking more than worlds, it seemed.

They owed so much to the boy Keyblade Master. Not only had Sora and his friends gotten rid of Maleficent, they had also made bigger dents in the Heartless population than Leon and his team ever could. They had also played vital roles in The Battle of a Thousand Heartless, defeated countless other threats to Radiant Garden – including Organisation XIII – and they returned Cloud to them.

And that right there was one gigantic reason Leon would always owe his loyalty to a kid barely half his age.

Leon still wasn't quite sure how Sora had managed it. At one time Leon had thought Cloud was gone forever. Then he'd found out his friend was alive, only to discover Cloud really _was_ lost, just in a different way than he'd thought. Nobody - not him, not Aerith, Cid, Yuffie nor even Tifa – had been enough to keep Cloud rooted when, at eighteen, he landed in Traverse Town by accident while chasing Sephiroth between worlds. Some part of Leon would always be standing on Devil's Peak, watching the friend he had failed to save fly away.

Yet somehow, impossibly, after meeting Sora Cloud had abandoned his quest and come back to them. More impossibly, he had stayed – for a whole _year_. He probably would have stayed longer if The Battle of a Thousand Heartless hadn't happened. Only when Sephiroth appeared again was Cloud pulled from their side, but this time he had promised to return. He'd never done that before.

Leon understood Cloud's connection to Sephiroth even less than he understood how Sora had made a phantom-eyed shell of a man not only remember the parts that made _him_ human, but also return to the people who loved him – people he'd already rejected before. In that year with them, Cloud had relearned how to live with other people, and also just how to be something other than an avenging soldier. He wasn't quite back to being the Cloud they remembered from Radiant Garden, and perhaps he never would be, but his progress gave them hope. A blend of new and old would be better than the bitter, cold individual he'd become.

Leon was willing to bet Cloud had seen in Sora the same thing others had – a clear-eyed determination that gave you faith he really could save the day, and made you ashamed of any doubts you'd ever had. You could believe in Sora. Moreover, you _wanted_ to believe in him, and by believing in him you found you were also believing in yourself again.

When Sora first landed in Traverse Town, Leon had been fighting the Heartless for years. The frustration of never seeming to make a difference had worn him down. It had made him cynical and hostile. He had become too jaded, he knew now, and had needed a good kick up the ass to renew his faith that they could, actually, win this war. He had disparaged the idea of Sora being the Keyblade Master. This scrappy, scrawny little kid, the saviour of worlds? Pull the other one. That is, until he saw for himself the power Sora possessed – not all of it in his keyblade. How wrong he had been. If part of him would always be on Devil's Peak, another part would always be in First District, gunblade locked with keyblade.

The memory of that first meeting was what had finally propelled Leon into the castle. Knowing Sora wouldn't hesitate sustained him as the castle doors clanked back, and a welter of memories he didn't want rushed him with the force of a freight train. If Sora could throw himself into battle when he was just a kid, what right did Leon have to cower at Merlin's house just because the big bad castle scared him?

No, not scared him. Not the building itself, at least – not at first. That came later, when the Committee realised the full extent of what Maleficent had left behind.

The castle was chock-full of the kind of dangerous magic that had even Merlin reaching for protective gloves. Maleficent's reign had started because of her extensive knowledge of the dark arts, and though she'd acquired the Heartless as her minions, she hadn't given up learning all she could about dark magic as well. The Committee had cleared out scrolls of spells, disposed of multi-coloured phials of disgusting potions, and even run across priceless, albeit evil artefacts as they tried to reclaim their old home. Neutralising the huge number of booby traps was the hardest part. Now it had ceased to be Hollow Bastion, sanitising Radiant Garden of Maleficent's touch was a hazardous business.

It was something of a hit-or-miss process, inasmuch as sometimes the things Maleficent had hidden hit you or missed you, depending on how close you were when they went off, as well as what they'd been designed to do. Apparently she had become increasingly paranoid as the years went by and her empire grew. Fearing rebellion or invasion from forces equal to her own, she'd wanted to protect the seat of her power and hadn't been content with just guards. Merlin said the intricacy of some protective spells was mind-boggling.

"Absolute genius of a woman," he muttered whenever they brought him a new bit of nastiness. "Twisted as a knotted snake, but a genius nonetheless."

"She was so cruel," Aerith said of a trap on the door of one storeroom filled with black magic artefacts. The spell literally turned intruders inside out, but kept them alive so they could fully appreciate their agony, presumably until the witch arrived and finished them off. "And what was she protecting, really? Just darkness and dark things that shouldn't ever have existed. She's made this place so horrible."

Leon, however, disagreed. His lasting memories of Radiant Garden didn't paint it as very nice in the first place. There had already been a lot of darkness and secrets here before Maleficent made it her headquarters.

Case in point: these damn doors he kept walking past. More specifically, what lay beyond them; memories, possibly objects he'd seen once before, when Lord Ansem fell from grace in the biggest way possible. Definitely memories, though. Already he was trying not to think too hard about his father walking this corridor, Lord Ansem and his trusted apprentice Xehanort ahead of him. This place had been the last his father saw before –

"C'mon, Squall, move your tush. We're burning daylight here." Yuffie paused in her capering to tap her chin thoughtfully. "Although, since we're underground, we can't actually see the sun, so who's to say it's daylight we're burning? We're burning … torchlight? Yeuch, that doesn't sound nearly as good." She blew out a breath. "Can't go wrong with the classics: Squall, you're a slowpoke."

Leon sighed, but privately he was a little glad of Yuffie's company, although he'd chew off his own tongue before admitting it. Yuffie was a handful. There was no other way of putting it. Despite growing up with Aerith's gentleness, Cid's gruffness and, well, himself, she had turned into the biggest bundle of hyperactive tomfoolery known to mankind. She could be annoying as a stone in your shoe on a long journey, and he often found himself exhausted by her antics. She'd been a handful as a kid, continued to be a handful as a teenager, and he'd wager that she'd be a handful as an adult too – a time not so far off now that her eighteenth birthday loomed, which was disturbing in an entirely different way.

Regardless, Yuffie had a way of getting under your skin but genuinely not realising she was the metaphorical equivalent of dry sand under there. Then, just when you thought you couldn't take another second of her company, she said or did something so considerate it stopped you in your tracks. You may want to brain her with the nearest hard object sometimes, but she was great at chasing away the blues. She blew away cobwebs with her chatter and injected life into dead places, like the corridors and abandoned laboratories beneath Radiant Garden.

"Slowpoke. Slowmo. Slowcoach. I could go on all day and not run out of names for you. Snail. Foot-dragger. Dawdler. Um …"

"That was a short day."

She puffed out her cheeks, pressed a fist against each and blew a long raspberry at him. "You're just jealous because my vocabulary totally kicks the ass of yours."

_No, I'd just rather be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. Bamboo under my fingernails sounds better than carrying on in this direction. _Nevertheless, he kept putting one foot in front of the other as if nothing was wrong.

"Lollygagger!" Yuffie said triumphantly. "Laggard!" She punched the air. "Oh yeah, I rock. Who knew listening in on Weirdy Beardy's babble would actually turn out to be useful?"

Leon felt a smidgen of tension ease in his shoulders.

"So this is really where Xemnas and Organisation XIII was born? Or grown. Or originated. Or transmogrified. Or … whatever. What the hell do you call it when a Nobody is … whatevered? Nobodied? That sounds weird. A question we should all ponder, I think."

The tension shot back up his spine like a rocket. "Yes. This is the place."

"Funny." Yuffie looked around. "I expected something a bit more pretentious, y'know? A bit showier. Those guys were, like, super-bad. Badness personified. Badness _cubed_. They monologued and everything. You'd think pompous assholes like that would've made their grand entrance somewhere you could waste adjectives describing, but this is so freaking ordinary it's making me want to spork out my own eyeballs to make it more interesting."

"Not all of them started here. Just the first six." Leon swallowed. Suddenly his mouth felt very dry. Ridiculous, but sometimes your physical reactions were more honest than any words. If Yuffie had asked if he was okay, he would've told her he was fine as the half-moon nail marks in his palms shouted: "Big fat liar!"

"I wonder what made the rest so special." Yuffie shrugged. "Ah well. Hey, look, we're here!"

"We are?"

"Yeah, 'cause I'm sick of walking without stopping anyplace. This door is as good as any."

Leon regarded it: big, blocky and unfriendly. "Do you have your tester spell?"

She started flipping through all the pouches on her belt. There were so many it took a while.

He rolled his eyes and brought out his own tester – the small enchantment Merlin had created to 'read' places for evil magic. It wasn't always the most accurate, especially if what they were testing had been treated with an enchantment they hadn't run across before, but it was better than nothing. The size of a baseball, shaped like an almond, off-white in colour, and smellier than Cid's favourite stinky cheese, each was kept in a layer of gauze until they needed it. Leon unwrapped and hefted it like a shot-put.

"Aw, can't I do it?" Yuffie clasped her hands and stuck out her lower lip.

He hesitated. "If you're careful," he said eventually.

"Yay!" She all but snatched it from his hand, went into an elaborate wind-up and hurled it at the doorway. It exploded in a cloud of powder.

Leon automatically took a step back. The spell wouldn't hurt him, but the powder could make you cough uncontrollably if you inhaled it. When it had settled enough he could see the doorway glowed a rapidly-fading violet, indicating it had been ensorcelled. The scale went from pale yellow, through red, all the way up to purple based on how potent the magic was. Violet designated this spell as too hot for them to handle alone.

"Damn it." Yuffie pouted again. "I guess we'll have to get Beardy down here."

Leon frowned. If Maleficent had seen the need to treat these doors with high-level black magic it meant she thought there was something down here worth guarding. Whatever it was, as sure as chocobos laid eggs, it wouldn't be good for them. He started running through a mental inventory of likely things. The Heartless-producing equipment Lord Ansem had invented, which had started the whole problem in the first place, had been moved to the upper levels along with the artificial-Heartless creator. Likewise the special containers used to hold newly made Heartless before she dispatched them to whatever place she wanted to conquer.

Despite himself, he shivered. He didn't shiver unless he was cold. Yuffie looked at him sidelong, since she was wearing her usual midriff-baring outfit and didn't have a single goosepimple.

They'd found the containers still filled with synthetic Heartless, as if Maleficent had been defeated mid-scheme. There had been a frozen-in-time quality to the scene, as though the witch might come back at any moment, but also because the last time any of them had seen those clear oblong boxes had been when Aerith, Tifa, Cid and, to a lesser extent, Yuffie, had rescued Leon from the one Commander Braig had locked him in while he killed Captain Trepe. It was a chunk of that exploding container that had given Leon his distinctive scar.

"Uh-oh."

His head snapped up, immediately scanning for danger – a default reaction bred by a decade of 'uh-oh' meaning anything from 'I burned dinner' to 'we're all going to die'. "What uh-oh?"

Yuffie pursed her lips at him. "You basically have three expressions, and only one of them remotely resembles a smile. That's not the smile look, and the other two looks suck, because one means danger's about to crap on us from a great height and we're gonna hurt really badly, and the other means you're doing the guilt thing. I'm going for Option C right now, which means I, in turn, have three options open to me: kick your butt, yell for Sora, or hurt myself in some entertaining way. Option A will mean you have to concentrate on the tweety-birds flying around your head, so you won't be able to think about whatever's bugging you. Option Two is there because you only started smiling again after Sora pulled all those freaking miracles. And Option Trois is in the mix because, hey, who _doesn't_ laugh at really, really, really good pratfall? Unfortunately Sora's not here, and I don't want any ouchies, which means it has to be the butt-kicking. So put up your dukes, Pouty McFrown-Face!"

Leon waited to see if the pause lasted long enough for him to get a few words in. "Yuffie, I'm fine."

She blew another raspberry. She could be surprisingly eloquent with them, actually. "Your voice says you're fine, but your eyes say 'Oh crap'."

"Yuffie –"

"Look, I get it, okay? I'm bouncing around like a gerbil on sugar – and don't ask me how I know what that looks like – but I'm not, like, totally insensitive. I get that this place is wigging you out. Why else do you think I volunteered to check it out with you? I'm the only one who _doesn't_ remember being here last time, and frankly your track record of doom n' gloom about the past means this place is the Roach Motel for any progress you've made into being an actual human being with fully functioning emotions instead of just a robot who bleeds. I like that you've got that third expression now. You went way, way too far into Pokerfaced Warrior Mode before Sora became Keyblade Master." She dropped her eyes. "I'll totally deny it if you tell anyone, but you were kinda scary for a while there."

Leon stared at her. He'd known he was unapproachable, but he'd liked it that way. The more he fought the Heartless, and the more he saw other people's losses mount up on top of his own, the more he thought personal connections would only hold him back or hurt when he screwed up again.

And in the back of his mind he had always assumed he would one day screw up again, possibly so monumentally he'd learn the _true_ meaning of losing everything. He had trusted once before and it had brought only betrayal, pain and slaughter. At least he'd come out of Radiant Garden's destruction with the tenuous threads of his sanity still plaited together. Fraying at the edges, but ultimately still holding together. Next time, he had thought as he hardened himself against Traverse Town's neon backdrop, he might not be so lucky.

Tifa's had come apart. They had tied them in a lasso and hauled her back to them with it, and she had recovered, but for a while he had been sure he'd lose her as well. Surviving wasn't just about being alive after the dust settled, they'd learned. Just look at Cloud.

Or not, as the case may be. Leon briefly wondered where Cloud was right now. Had he defeated Sephiroth? No, he would have returned if he had. Leon didn't even consider the idea that Cloud may have been the one defeated, such was his faith in his old friend's skills these days. Cloud would come back when it was time to come back.

How very Zen. Gods, he really _had_ mellowed.

… _you were kinda scary …_

The routine in Traverse Town, when he used to take trips out in gummi ships he often lost to the enemy, had been endless and exhausting. Cid had only started his business when it became apparent Leon was going to go through ships 'as fast figs through a short grandmother' in his continual quest to find ways of defeating the Heartless. Cid had needed a place that could accommodate all the repairs and rebuilds, somewhere to develop new ideas and improvements, and enough cash to keep them all from starving in the meantime. Even when his business became successful, he was only just able to keep up with the work Leon generated all on his own. There was always some new gemstone to be found, some new magic to be recovered, or another 'hopeful avenue' as King Mickey diplomatically put it.

For Leon, it hadn't been a cure for his pain and guilt so much as a distraction. Anything that dulled the ache had been welcome. He was only just beginning to understand what it must have been like living with him that way. It was a wonder Yuffie, Cid and Aerith had stuck by him at all, much less as long or tenaciously as they had.

"I'm sorry."

Yuffie mimed a swoon. "Holy fuck! Now _there_ are two words I never thought I'd hear out of _your_ mouth. That's it, I must be dreaming. This is all a big trip to the Land of Nod, and you're not really you at all. You're an illusion. No, wait, what's the word? Hallucination, that's it! I must've passed out from hunger, and you're just a hallucination." She staggered theatrically, pressing the back of one hand against her forehead.

Leon felt the corners of his lips twitch. The sensation, in this dark and terrible place, was so unexpected it made him want to smile _more_. He had been dreading coming down here, and had eventually forced himself into facing this out of sheer bloody-mindedness. He had survived this long. After all he'd seen, done, and all the people he'd met, he wasn't going to let these corridors and rooms scare him off, he'd told himself – right before Yuffie leaped on him from behind a door and insisted he take her with him.

Suddenly he frowned. "Yuffie, watch out!"

In her play-acting, she had stepped too close to the still-fading violet door for his liking. She pivoted on one foot, tugging down the skin beneath one eye and sticking out her tongue at him.

"Pish posh. Don't be such a worrywart. I'm a ninja, remember? Reflexes like a cat on acid, and the agility of a … really agile animal that doesn't fall over just because it's standing on one leg."

"Yuffie –"

She switched legs. "See? Being down here is making you antsy, that's all. I'm fine and so are you. There's nothing to be afraid of down here. Honest. All the bad guys are gone, and the sooner you realise that, the sooner we can all get to being one big happy family instead of a bunch of different personalities who live together – whoa!" Yuffie switched feet again, somehow managed to step on her own toes, and toppled backwards against the door.

Leon reached to haul her back before whatever spell was there could discharge. Sometimes there were a few seconds in which to get clear, which had saved their hides more than once.

Except there was no protective spell. Nothing discharged, though the door continued to glow, indicating that whatever magic was here extended beyond the door itself. It wasn't even locked. It opened when Yuffie tumbled against the handle and tried to use it to keep herself from falling over. The door swung outward, squashing her against the wall with a squawk.

Leon was aware of something dark in the room behind the door – blacker than black, a shadow within a shadow. As if only just sensing the way was clear, it pulsed outward, straining like a giant bubble being blown by a huge set of lungs. Then it erupted, washing over him with such force that he was knocked off his feet.

He was aware of landing on his back, and his head cracking against the floor, right before he passed out.

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_To Be Continued …_

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	2. The Meaning of Friendship

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**2. The Meaning of Friendship**

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"Aerith! Aerith! Fuck it all to hell and back, pick _up_!"

Aerith fumbled about on her nightstand for her communicator. Roughly the size and shape of the perfect skimming stone, Cid had built them after The Battle of a Thousand Heartless, when he realised that going out individually was far more dangerous here than in Traverse Town, and they could no longer rely on flares to call for help when they ran into trouble. After many rough drafts, he had finally designed a device that did the job but was durable enough to survive a fall down a mountain, a plunge underwater, or being exposed to open flames of overwhelming temperatures. He now insisted each member of the Committee had one and kept it near at all times. Yuffie's constant attempts to test their resilience, and Cid bawling at her for it, were sources of constant entertainment.

"Mrrf," Aerith rubbed her eyes and mumbled into hers. "Hello?"

"Aerith! Thank fuck!"

"Yuffie, don' swear s'much." She yawned, choking on it when Yuffie spoke again.

"I think I killed Squall."

"_What_?"

"Well, he's still breathing, and he's not bleeding any, but he banged his head pretty hard when he hit the floor, and he's out cold, like totally unconscious, and he's just _lying_ there, I mean here – here in the dungeons, that is – and he won't wake up, not even when I slapped him and poured my canteen over his head, and he's awful pale, and he keeps making these weird gurgly sounds, which might have something to do with the canteen water, but just as easily might not, and I'm beginning to freak out ever so slightly because I don't know what to doooooo –"

Aerith struggled to follow what Yuffie was telling her. Already she'd swung her legs out of bed and was sliding on her boots one-handed. She had only meant to take a short nap, so she was still wearing her day clothes and could rush from the room without pause.

"Yuffie, tell me exactly where you are."

"Well I don't know, do I? Nobody ever came down this far before because this is where all that bad shit happened with Braig the Plague, and you've all been avoiding it _like_ the plague ever since we came back. I was just following Squall. I wasn't paying attention to where we were going or anything, I was just trying to make sure he didn't go loco being down here all by himself. And instead I bashed him in the head with the freaking floor!"

Cold washed through Aerith like ice water. She knew exactly where they were. "Wait there," she said anyway. "I'll come to you."

* * *

Leon blinked back to consciousness … and then leapt to his feet. Years of the former had trained him in the latter. When taking too long to shake off sleep could mean the difference between life and death, you learned to function on minimal scraps of conscious thought and whole lot of instinct.

"It's alive!" cried a voice. "It's aliiiiiiiiiive! And it's … pointing a gunblade at me. Squall, put that away."

"Yuffie?" The world came a little more back into focus. Likewise the pain in his skull. The scattered wits he gathered felt edged in broken glass. He dropped the point of his weapon towards the floor and held a hand to his head. "What the hell …?"

"Happened?" said another voice. "That's what I'd like to know."

Aerith. Aerith was here. That meant some time had to have passed since he was knocked out. But … what had knocked him out? He struggled to recall. Yuffie had fallen against a door, swung it open and … hit him with it?

Well that was just great. Here he was, the champion of a thousand Heartless battles, laid low by a clumsy ninja and a piece of interior design.

It wasn't just any door though, was it? He had thrown a tester. It had reacted, which meant –

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Yuffie demanded.

"One," Leon said automatically.

"You're not even looking."

"Yuffie, I know you're flipping me the bird."

"Did that blow to the head unlock your previously hidden psychic powers or something?"

"No, you always say that line and make that gesture when people come to."

"Ah, crap, I'm getting predictable in my old age."

Leon shook his head, trying to settle events back into order. "You hit me with the door."

"Yeah. Um. Yeah. Sorry about that." Yuffie rubbed the back of her head with one hand and refused to meet his eyes. "My bad."

He shook his head again. "No, that's not it. You _opened_ the door. And you're still alive. That thing tested almost purple."

Aerith glanced sharply at the door, which hung open and forgotten behind them. "It did?"

"You shouldn't have even been able to touch it without getting hurt."

Yuffie looked at her hands, turning them over. She felt her way up her arms, inspected each leg, did an awkward pirouette to check out her own backside, and then bent almost double to peer out at them from between her knees. "Nope, everything's present and accounted for."

"This isn't a laughing matter," Aerith frowned.

"Everything's a laughing matter. You just gotta find the punchline." Yuffie pressed her palms against the floor, levered herself into a handstand and raised her left arm in a display of impossible balance. "If you don't laugh, you cry or go mad, so bring on the hyuks already!"

Leon continued to scowl. "I suppose it could have been a Bounce-Back spell," he said, but didn't sound convinced.

Bounce-Backs were concussive blasts of energy that either knocked you off your feet or smashed you against the nearest wall. The stronger ones then pummelled you like an oncoming wave of invisible water, pressing you into whatever you'd run up against to crush you so your internal organs ruptured. The smaller spells weren't quite so fatal, but were still nasty. It was like being hit by a giant gust of air and hurt like hell, especially if you hit something.

_Like a floor_, part of him reasoned. _That's probably what it was. Just a Bounce-Back spell or something similar. _

He shook his head for a third time. He wasn't usually so ready to dismiss things or go for the easiest explanation. Then again, his brain throbbed and it felt like someone had glued a goose egg to the back of his skull.

Aerith stepped up to him. "You don't look so good."

"I feel worse," he admitted, fingering the lump. "_Ow_."

She ran her own fingers over it. Her touch was unsurprisingly cool and soothing. If there was a more natural healer in any world, Leon had never met them. Even Queen Minnie didn't exude the same level of reassurance Aerith could generate doing nothing but standing next to you. He submitted to Aerith's ministrations, only hissing when she brushed the injury once more. A blossom of her magic opened above them, raining pinpricks of light onto the top of his head. He felt immediately better, although the headache remained and the harsh strip-lighting continued to hurt his eyes.

"You're lucky you didn't fracture your skull," she said. He was familiar enough with her voice to note the undercurrent of alarm. "You didn't just hit the floor; you _smashed_ into it."

"Sure feels that way." He rolled his shoulders.

"I've taken care of the concussion, but …" She gnawed her lower lip. "You're going to hate me saying this, but I strongly recommend some rest. On top of this, you're way, way too tense. I doubt those burst blood vessels in your eye were all because of a bump on the head."

Everyone was aware of his inability to switch off. Already he could feel his shoulders climbing. "We're not done here -" A sudden flash of pain stabbed into the back of his right eyeball. He pressed the heel of his hand into the socket, as if forcing the offending thing back in.

Aerith folded her arms. "I think you are."

"She's got a point, Squall," Yuffie chimed in. "You look like a hundred miles of bad road. A thousand miles, even. No, a hundred thousand!"

"Your sympathy is touching," he muttered.

"I do what I can," she grinned. "I'm just glad your brain isn't all splattered across the floor."

"I wouldn't be so sure." He unsquinched his eyes, and his gaze fell once more on the gaping doorway. It looked blank and uninviting.

And familiar.

His stomach felt suddenly full of stones.

"Squall?" Yuffie said when he took a step forward.

For once, he didn't bother to correct his name. "This is one of the holding cells where they kept their test subjects."

"What?"

"Xehanort. Professor Even. His student, Ienzo." The names came back easily – easy the way slitting your own wrists was easy, and about as painful and deadly if you let the cuts each name made go too deep. "Commander Dilan. Commander Aeleus. Commander Braig." _The Blood Trio,_ his brain whispered. _You used to read about them in history books about the war, and in newspapers stored in the library archives. People talked about them, about how brave they were, how heroic. Even Cid acknowledged their skills, and he hated their guts even before they betrayed everyone. _"When the Heartless were first discovered … when they first started creating them, they used all sorts of people in their experiments. They kept them here. And if they died without giving up their hearts … if the trauma done to their bodies was too much for them to take … they were left here to rot."

Xehanort had gone mad at the end. All of them did. It didn't make any difference. Mad or sane, the evil had always been there, right down to their cores. Exposing themselves to their own machines, trying to manipulate the darkness in their hearts into biddable weapons, had just stripped them of their inhibitions about showing it.

Leon swallowed. "This is where I lost Cloud the first time. And General Sephiroth. He … he wasn't a bad guy back then. No wings, no vendetta, none of the bloodlust that characterises him now. He didn't even know who Cloud was. They'd never actually met. Even if Cloud hadn't disappeared before Sephiroth arrived, he would've been too low down the pecking order to register on the great General's radar." Leon gave a short, humourless laugh. "Sephiroth was on our side back then – or at least he wasn't on _theirs_."

"Organisation XIII," Aerith murmured.

"Before they split into Nobodies and Heartless to become the Organisation," Leon corrected. "I was never quite sure whether they were worse before or after."

Sora had told them all about the Nobodies and their quest to find Kingdom Hearts. The whole thing had sounded like an elaborate ruse to Leon. The Xehanort he'd seen blast Sephiroth with living darkness hadn't had any need of his emotions – none except pride, and at the end even that was subsumed by madness. Then again, according to Sora, Nobodies were functionally different people than those they'd been born from. They had their own personalities, their own names and appearances, their own hopes and dreams, so Xemnas was no more Xehanort than … well, than _Sora_ was.

Leon went towards the holding cell like a fish on a line.

Aerith caught his arm. "Leon …"

He shook her off. "I need to do this." Before she could protest further, he had stepped through the door and into a piece of his past he'd wished for years to forget. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

"Smells kind of funky in here," Yuffie remarked. She was standing beside him as if her wrist was handcuffed to his, but he hadn't seen her move. He'd thought her still outside with Aerith. "Like that time I left my cheese, pickle, lettuce and tomato sandwich on top of the radiator, and it fell down behind it, and we didn't find it for _weeks_." She sniffed. "Also? Essence of Fucked Up-ish-ness. A very distinctive scent purveyed only by the most discerning of mad scientists, morally bankrupt cretins, and all-around evil bastards."

"That doesn't sound too far from the mark," Aerith said softly. "I've always thought evil has a distinctive scent, but I always thought it was more like liquorice."

"Liquorice?" Yuffie stuck out her tongue. "Evil stuff in its own right, but true Evil smells more like old socks and puke. Seriously."

Leon stared at them. They'd just … walked right in here, like it was nothing. Which, to them, he reminded himself, it was. They didn't look at the shadows and see afterimages of corpses being sucked up by the bastard lovechild of oil and smoke. They didn't still hear Braig screaming, or feel the clutch on their ankles when the Commander tried to stop them leaving. They hadn't been there to witness what had happened.

They _had_ been there to see what it did to him afterwards. They knew how much it had taken for him to come down here and cross the few steps over the threshold. They had crossed it alongside him without a second thought, just like they'd always stood by him, back when it was just them, him and Cid in Traverse Town. Not for the first time, Leon reflected that whatever else it had left him with, the destruction of Radiant Garden had also given him people he cared about more than he had ever cared about anyone before –

The stabbing pain in his right eye nearly drove him to his knees.

"Whoa, timbeeer!" Yuffie hooked her arms through his, pulling his weight to lean against her and keep him upright – an ineffective move, since he was still much taller than her. If he really had been unable to stand, his weight would have been too much to keep from crushing her. Still, he appreciated the gesture, even as he grunted irritably and shrugged her off. He wobbled slightly.

Yuffie rammed her fists against her hips and tapped her foot. "That's it; you're gonna go get some rest if I have to tie you down to make you stay put. C'mon, Aerith. Help me get him upstairs."

Aerith, however, was staring at the tiny space around them and chewing her lower lip. She didn't seem to have heard Yuffie.

"Yo, Ponytail!" Yuffie often used nicknames, and this was the most frequent for Aerith. Bellowed in close quarters, it nearly made her jump out of her skin.

"Yes!" Aerith yelped. "I mean … uh-huh, upstairs, let's go. With Leon. To make him get some rest. Um …" She glanced around again and sighed. "Sorry, I was just … I've never actually been in here before."

Leon caught on quickly. "Yes," he said in answer to a question she hadn't asked. "This is the place."

Aerith dropped her gaze. "It's so small. And dark. There aren't even any windows this far underground." Her voice fell to barely a whisper. "It must have been so awful."

Yuffie looked between them with a puzzled expression. "Please to be explaining now?"

"Cloud," Leon said simply.

Her mouth became a round 'o' of comprehension. "Oh. Yeah. Um. Shit."

"Do you really have to cuss so much? You're worse than Cid."

"_Nobody_ is worse than Old Fart. He can turn the air blue around you just for looking at him funny." Yuffie shuddered. "I don't know about you guys, but this place gives me the willies. Like, for serious. Can we please get out of here now?"

"Yeah," Leon nodded. "There's nothing here." He heard the trace of surprise in his voice.

Part of him really had expected this place to be as significant as its role in his memories – in his _nightmares _– made it seem, but it was just a small dark room with metal walls and a cold floor. It could have been anywhere. Any evidence of the crimes committed here had vanished along with the people who committed them. You'd never know this was the scene where Cloud changed from who he'd been into who he was now – or at least where he had begun the progress from a regular teenager into vengeful warrior pinned between darkness and light like an insect on a corkboard.

Yuffie hooked one arm through his again, leaning her head against his upper arm. How could someone so tiny not run through her reserves of energy faster than him? Where did she keep it all? And did she have any going spare? He felt more wrung out than an old dishcloth.

"Duh," she said. "That's kind of the point."

"The point?"

"You wanted closure, right? That _was_ why you made the trip down here? Or are you gonna try and feed me some line about just checking for more and Green and Ghastly's booby-traps?"

Closure. The sense of being finished with something; of confronting what bothers you and realising that whatever it is, however much it has occupied your thoughts, it's over now. Leon wasn't sure whether anything had actually been resolved by this expedition, but he had to acknowledge that Yuffie was right.

Yuffie's brow puckered suddenly. "Hey, Ponytail? Didn't you say you were making enchiladas while we were down here? 'Cause you sounded awfully not-with-it when I call you before."

"I fell asleep."

"So no enchiladas?"

"Sorry."

"Aw, phooey. My stomach thinks my throat has been cut!"

Leon, rather than lament the lack of food awaiting them in the upper levels, frowned at Aerith. "You fell asleep _again_?" She'd been doing that more and more lately. They were all tired from working so hard, but she also, now that he took the time to examine her face, looked rather pale. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin had that washed-out look that came when your immunities were fighting something that wasn't enough to make you actually sick, but still made you feel low.

"I'm just really tired," Aerith shrugged. "I haven't been sleeping well lately. It's nothing to worry about, so wipe that look off your face. I guess the stress of moving from Merlin's house to rooms in the castle was just more than I figured on. So many memories, you know?"

Leon knew. Oh, how he knew.

Being here was hard on all of them. Leon wondered whether they'd overstepped themselves and come back too soon. Then again, if they'd held off there was a chance they never would have come back at all. Returning to this world was an exercise in guesswork, luck and hoping for the best.

"Part of me is glad I haven't gone into Healer House," Aerith said, referring to the quarters where the healer corps had lived during Lord Ansem's reign.

There were various infirmaries where healers had worked, scattered throughout the castle, but trainees, their mentors and all the other healers had lived separately. Healer House was also where they had conducted studies on how to improve standard medicine, as well as the magically-enhanced kind. Leon remembered it as a place wreathed in wildly embellished stories and strange-smelling vapours. It was a major reason Aerith had been practically a stranger when King Mickey rescued them.

"Who knows what Maleficent turned it into while we were gone," Aerith went on. "There were a lot of things in there she could have used for her own ends. But part of me still wants to get inside and see … everything." She waved a loose hand as though conducting a rodent orchestra. "My own form of closure, I guess. Plus, there's always a chance she just shut up shop so nobody else could use what was there and forgot about the place while she was preoccupied with her own schemes. If some things survived, I'd like to get at them. They could help us so much while battling the Heartless is still a concern. You know I never finished my healer training, but if I had access to those resources …"

_Plus, that place is a part of you_, Leon added. _Like this room is a part of me. We just can't leave them alone._

"C'mon," Yuffie insisted. "Let's make tracks. There's nothing to see here."

"Then why was there a spell on the door?" Leon asked matter-of-factly. "It may have been only a mild Bounce-Back, but there has to be a reason why Maleficent put it there."

"Um, maybe because she was an evil rhymes-with-witch?"

Leon shook his head and then stopped with a wince. "It doesn't make sense." He fought to think clearly, but his brain felt gauzy, thoughts coming away in chunks instead of layers when he reached for them.

"A lot of stuff she did doesn't make sense," Yuffie replied. "At least not to anybody _sane_."

"I still have to look at …" He paused. "But I guess that'll keep for another time." He headed for the door with quick strides.

"Ah, the fine art of conversation isn't dead after all," Yuffie sighed. "Yo, Squall, wait up!"

_

* * *

_

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

_._


	3. Dinner Plans

.

* * *

**3. Dinner Plans**

* * *

"You did _what_?"

"Went into the dungeons for a look. A gander. A look-see. A reccy. An explore. A journey of discovery, even!"

Cid ground his teeth and started counting. With Yuffie, you needed numbers higher than ten, and he didn't have time to waste. "I know what the word means, brat. What the fuck were you doing down there at _all_?"

"Didn't I just explain this?"

"Was it your idea?"

"Hell no."

He grunted. Leon's idea. That figured. The kid – not actually a kid now, but Cid still mentally tagged him that way – was antsy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He'd been that way for a while now. Cid often noted the way his knuckles suddenly whitened around his gunblade, as an unpleasant thought struck him, or the way he glanced at the staircase to the labs and holding cells below ground, only to look away again and pretend he hadn't. Leon was ticking. Only time would tell whether his fuse burned all the way down, and how much powder he contained if it did.

"I don't like it," Cid grumbled.

"You don't like anything," Yuffie shot back. "Except garlic – how much are you gonna _put_ in that sauce? No wonder I call you Old Fart."

Cid glanced down and realised that instead of a single clove he had grated an entire garlic bulb. He gritted his teeth. He wasn't a brilliant cook, but over the years he had learned a few things out of necessity. He knew what he _didn't_ like – pack rations topping a long list. He had generally designed his diet around making sure nothing resembling those packs them ended up in front of him. When he took on the care of four extra mouths he had added a few dishes to his repertoire, but for the most part Aerith had taken on the cooking. She couldn't make a cup of tea worth shit, but her food was edible and nutritious. For a long time that was all they had required, until Yuffie woke up to her hormones and became The Teenage Eating Machine.

That had been a kicker. Teenagers – ugh. Cid had been dreading the mood swings and finding someone else to give her 'The Talk', but she had remained cheerful. Thoughtfully, she had found out everything she needed to know about sex, boys and puberty on her own. Not so thoughtfully, she liked to ahre her discoveries with him. He tried to forget how she had followed him around their house in Traverse Town, complaining loudly about period pains and excess trapped gas. He had done a lot of handywork back then: hammering, drilling, woo-shaving, replacing roof tiles – basically anything that got him out of her way or drowned her out.

As if in response to being left on her own, her body had refocused its energies and developed an appetite to rival a garbage disposal set on high. She never gained an ounce despite her eating habits, which ranged from filching from other people's plates to raiding the fridge for cheesecake at three in the morning. Most teenage girls would be happy about a metabolism so fast it was a blur, but Yuffie was definitely _not _most teenage girls. Worse than talking about her monthlies was her complaining about her lack of curves and the fact she still barely needed a training bra. More than once Cid had determinedly ignored what she'd stuffed down her top to make her chest look bigger, although he did start keeping his thermal socks in a locked drawer.

"You done laying that pasta yet, brat?" he asked now.

"That sounds really dirty, you know."

"And a paring knife sounds mighty attractive right now, but you don't wanna know what I'm thinking of doing with it."

"Temper-temper." Yuffie lifted the large glass dish and skidded it across the countertop towards him. "Done and done, Mr. Grumpy-Pants. You really are grouchy when your meals are late, aren't you? But you can't blame Aerith. She looked freaking awful. No way could she cook. I think she's coming down with something."

"That'd be typical," Cid muttered, "since she's the only one who'd be really screwed over by a common cold."

In one of the universe's supreme ironies, healers could take care of a thousand and one ailments in others, but couldn't heal even a paper-cut of their own. It made everyone more protective of Aerith while they were growing up, since that same irony meant she could barely fight to protect herself in a battle. She still insisted on going out in case anyone else got hurt. Aerith was halfway between indispensable and a hindrance in the field. The worst part was that she knew it, and in the beginning had taken stupid risks to compensate. She was more sensible now, but the others had a tendency to treat her like she was made of glass when enemies turned up.

"What's this?" Yuffie unscrewed the top of a jar, inhaled, sneezed, and sneezed again when the force of the first blasted a cloud of orange powder back into her face.

"It _was_ cumin," Cid snapped. "Now it's a pot of snot. Fuck off, brat. You're being a nuisance."

"Tou-chy." Yuffie screwed the lid back on and made as if to return the cumin to its shelf. Thinking better of it, she looked contemplatively at the pot. Then she picked up an unpeeled garlic bulb and a tomato.

Cid could see what she was planning before she actually started to juggle, but his hands were full so he couldn't stop her. He could cross the few steps between them and headbutt her into submission, he supposed, but since he reckoned her head was hard as a diamond, he didn't think much of his chances of escaping without a concussion. He settled for washing lettuce leaves and mumbling curses.

Washing lettuce leaves? When the fuck did he get so domesticated? If only his old crew could see him now – or even his old students! Many former Air Force cadets would never have believed gruff, tough, mean-eyed Captain Highwind would one day stand in the huge, empty castle kitchens, wearing an apron and making dinner.

When they were almost done, Cid hustled Yuffie to fetch the others and resisted the urge to heave a sigh at the few minutes out of her company. It wasn't that she was a bad kid – relatively speaking – but she was damn tiring. More often than not she made him want to rake his fingers down a wall. A wall studded with broken glass. He had always assumed ninjas were aloof and silent. So much for that crock of shit.

Aerith arrived first and left first. Almost as soon as she took a bite her eyes rounded and she ran from the room. She returned looking sicker than ever. Her skin wasn't quite green, but it was fish-belly white and sweaty. Whatever bug she'd picked up was a vicious, fast-working thing. It seemed to have gone after her in particular, probably because of her weakened state after healing Leon.

Actually, Cid reflected, it was weird how much that simple healing had tired her. She had done bigger jobs before and not been so badly affected. Either Leon had been much worse off than Cid had figured, or being back in the castle was really getting to Aerith. He resolved to ask Merlin later whether it was possible for a building to affect people physically as well as mentally _without_ using magic. Some sort of psychological shit, perhaps? Maybe it was worth making her move back in with that windbag for a while if the castle was distressing her so much.

Worrying always put him in a foul mood. Cid grumbled, "Where the hell is that punk-ass kid?"

"Since I'm here, I'm assuming you mean Squall," said Yuffie. "By the way, Merlin left a note in that room he was working in. He went back to his house to pick up some stuff, but should be back in an hour. Looks like it's just you and me for lunch, big boy." She batted her eyelashes. "A cosy meal for two, and you get the pleasure of my company all to yourself."

Cid considered this. "I don't care how hard the kid hit his head. Go fetch him. Now."

* * *

Aerith wiped at her forehead and wished the room would stop spinning. She had felt awful since coming up from the lower levels. Images of that horrible holding cell kept popping into her head. Even more frequent were ones fabricated by her own mind: Cloud in there; Cloud buried in corpses; Cloud waiting to die, nostrils full of rotting-flesh stench; Cloud being tortured in those sick experiments; Cloud screaming, and then not screaming at all …

She had seen him cry out in pain before. She had seen him injured, bleeding, unconscious and sprawled on a rock as if he was dead. It wasn't hard to superimpose those memories onto that cell. Her brain didn't listen when she said no. Each image made her feel nauseous. She couldn't bear thinking of him being hurt that way – or any way. Cloud didn't deserve to suffer more than he already had.

She had grown close to him over the year he spent with them. She recalled how she had seen him again for the first time: Cid ushering him into the library, Leon frozen with shock, Yuffie going still as the sudden tension slammed into even her. The atmosphere had crystallised around them like ice. Nobody knew what to say. Merlin and Cid were at a loss, so it had fallen to either herself or Yuffie to break it. Since for Yuffie 'shatter' was a more likely verb, Aerith had stepped forward, peered into Cloud's down-turned face and said the first thing that came to mind.

"At least this time you don't need sewing back together. That was considerate of you."

It had been banal and stupid, but it had made him raise his head and blink like she was a person, not just a piece of scenery. Then he had looked around the room, fastening his eyes on each person in it.

"May I stay a while?" he had asked, polite as you please. Nothing in his tone betrayed how he felt, what had brought him there, or what caused his change of heart after he refused to stay last time.

And they had let him. They hadn't even had to think about it, which was impressive, since only one of them really knew Cloud, and this version wasn't the one Leon had befriended as a teen.

"I won't lie to you," Cloud had said later, after telling them about his encounter with Sora. He had stopped at the point where Sora bested his opponents in the Coliseum. Aerith could tell, even then, that he _didn't _tell them more than he did. Cloud wasn't a liar, but he wasn't above omitting certain truths. "Sephiroth _will_ come. You have the right to make me leave because of that. He'll come because I'm here. He'll go wherever I go, from now until either time ends, or one or the both of us die."

"Ego much?" Yuffie had murmured, until Aerith elbowed her.

"When he realises I've stopped chasing him, he'll come to see why. He'll come after me. He'll track me down. He _will _find me if I don't find him first. When he does, I'll have to fight him."

"We'll help," Leon had said resolutely.

But Cloud had shaken his head. "You can't. Not against him."

"We're a lot stronger than you give us credit for."

"You're still no match for him."

"You say that," Yuffie had chimed in, "but you, buddy-boy … haven't … seen … our … moves." She'd punctuated each word with a different pose she imagined made her look threatening, but actually just made her look like she had cramps.

"If you face him," Cloud had replied, as if she hadn't spoken, "you'll die. He'll kill you. He won't even think about it; he'll just do it. You wouldn't be a threat to him. You'd just be an inconvenience to be removed so he could get to me."

Yuffie had deflated. "Well that sucks."

"I've never allowed that risk to be a possibility before, but now …"

"Now what? Now we're suddenly expendable?"

"Yuffie!" Aerith had hissed.

Cloud had frowned. It wasn't so much an expression as just a shifting of his eyebrows. "I'll defend you to my last breath if I have to, but you won't be his targets. He won't come for you. He'll come for me."

"Why?" Aerith had asked softly.

"Because he always has. Because he always will." It wasn't much of an answer, but it was all Cloud was willing to give. "I've tried to keep collateral damage to a minimum."

"Is that all we are?" Leon had asked throatily. "Collateral damage in your fight with Sephiroth?" Other questions hung in the air like a building thunderstorm. Accusations, too – things Leon would never say in a million years, but which criss-crossed his mind like wriggling tadpoles.

"No. Yes. I …" And cold, distant Cloud had actually faltered. He couldn't find the right words to make them understand. Maybe he didn't really understand himself. Aerith wondered how long it had been since he used words more than minimally – or at all. His voice was low and rusty with disuse. "Now I … I want …"

Leon's hands had twitched. He had still been buttoned-up as a high collar, still playing the intrepid warrior and defender of Traverse Town. He hadn't known what to do when all his pre-programmed responses failed him.

Aerith had rescued him once more from this emotional body-slam. Cloud wanted them; he wanted to be with them. He had remembered he was human and was experiencing emotions he hadn't let himself feel in years. He _needed _them, even if he couldn't admit it.

"You can stay as long as you need to," she had said. "And you can leave when you need to." Silently she had added: _Because of Sephiroth, or if living with people gets too overwhelming and frightens you away_.

It wasn't immediately obvious until you got to know him, and even then you could miss the signs. Cloud Strife came off as antisocial and unfeeling, but in actual fact he was defined by his emotions. His hatred for Sephiroth was like a living creature that followed him around. The fact he had stayed away for years, starving himself of basic connections with friends and family, in case Sephiroth hurt them, spoke more about Cloud's personality than any words. Shining through those decisions were glimmers of the boy Leon and Tifa described.

Cloud _cared_. It didn't seem that way, but the more time he spent with them, the more obvious it became. He couldn't show it. Perhaps he couldn't remember how anymore. Even so, he cared about people, including those he barely knew. He couldn't articulate the things inside him, but the feelings were there.

The only time he seemed at ease about expressing himself was in battle. There was a very real, very potent darkness inside Cloud, married to a wellspring of pain that seemed to have no end. He worked out his confusing emotions by fighting the Heartless, but everyone knew it wasn't enough. Chasing and being chased by Sephiroth had conditioned him. Battles life-threatening to them barely scratched the surface of Cloud's need to vent, leaving him restless and twitchy. Several times they had woken the day after a battle, expecting to find him gone. He was always there. He wasn't happy, but he had stayed.

In the months before they moved back permanently to Hollow Bastion, Aerith had often gone out to her garden in Traverse Town and found him staring at the sky, an inscrutable look on his face. The first time she had just stood with her watering can, watching the back of his head.

"What do you want?" he'd asked tightly.

"Red Hot Cat Tails."

"What?"

"Or Scorpion Orchids, but the temperature here is too mild to grow either."

Cloud had turned to her, staring with an intensity that could take chrome off steel. "Flowers?" he'd said, maybe sounding not so sure of himself, as if her answer was so far from what he'd been expecting that he couldn't process it at regular speed.

"That _is_ generally what you get in a garden. Although I'm trying to get a decent crop of carrots from the vegetable patch. They don't look nearly as good in a vase with a ribbon around them." She'd smiled. It was like dropping stones into a deep pool – a tiny ripple and then nothing. "Gardening's very therapeutic. It helps me think."

"Hm." Just a noise, not even a word. He had meant something by it; she just wasn't sure what.

She got a better idea when, a few days later, she found him there again. He didn't say anything, but sat and watched her work.

_At least he's not watching the sky_, she had thought_. That's progress._

The time after that he watched her, too. He didn't appear regularly, and she couldn't predict how long he'd stay. Sometimes she looked up to find him gone, though she hadn't seen him leave. Other times he was there when she arrived and still there when she left. He seemed fascinated with soil, as if expecting it to disappear out from under him at any moment.

After a few more occasions she brazened it out and brought something for him.

"What's this?" he had said, staring at her hand.

"It's called a trowel."

"I know what a trowel is."

"Then you know how to use one?" She had offered it handle-first, not like a weapon, but not exactly like a gift either.

Cloud had looked at it, outwardly expressionless, but by then she could see uncertainty in the tiny dilation of his pupils, and the hint of suspicion tightening the corners of his mouth. A healer was good at reading the body's natural responses. Though Cloud seemed to have excised all unnecessary reactions, they were still there in increments.

"Any garden is a chore," she had said. "I don't get out into this one as much as I'd like, but I try my best. Still, there's a lot of work to do. More than one person can ever hope to do alone. I've been working on mine for years, but it never really stops needing attention. The moment you turn your back there's something else that needs to be done. If you let up for a second, things can seem like they're getting out of control."

Cloud continued to stare at the trowel.

"If the Heartless get their way, I may not be still be here to see my seeds grow next season. If we move back to Hollow Bastion and leave Traverse Town, someone else will have to look after my garden. Some people might call that a waste of my time if someone else gets the payoff when everything blooms, but I don't feel that way. The fact I've done the planting and helped the plants grow won't change just because I don't see their petals." She had bitten the inside of her cheek. "I have no idea what the future holds, Cloud. Nobody does. But broken hearts are sometimes helped by work."

He had lifted his eyes to hers when she said that. She tried to keep her gaze sure. She needed to look like she was as profound as her words made her sound, not fizzing inside like the bottle of beer Yuffie had shaken and put back in the fridge the week before. It had exploded in Cid's face, drenching him. He had chased her all over the house and down the street before his paunch made him gasp to a stop. Though it meant sleeping on the roof and watching out for Cid's attempts to settle the score, the prank had achieved what Yuffie intended: a slight quirk of Leon's concrete mouth. Likewise, Aerith's trowel did what she intended when Cloud accepted it and started to dig beside her.

She imagined the steady crunch of metal in dirt now, and pictured him on his knees, listening as she explained the difference between mulch and compost. She imagined those first tentative times he gardened; how he had crushed the trowel handle and she realised why he needed a sword bigger and heavier than he was. She had never seen him falter before then, but the thought of planting a tiny seedling, its delicate roots so easily damaged, threw him off balance in an endearing kind of way. Until the day she died she would remember him standing there, arms outstretched and palms cupped around the seedling, holding it away from himself like it was a baby with a dirty diaper.

The memories helped to drive out those horrible images of him in that holding cell. She called up more memories of him doing mundane and gentle things – things nobody who had seen him fight could imagine. It would have been easier if her head wasn't pounding.

Likewise when her door crashed open.

"Yo, Ponytail!"

Aerith groaned. "Yuffiiiiiie."

"Not feeling any better, huh?"

She pulled a pillow over her head and groaned again.

"Wow. Sucks to be you."

"Mrrf."

"Hey, I'm being compassionate!"

Aerith shifted the pillow to stare at her. "How do you figure?"

"I'm checking to make sure your head hasn't exploded in a big pulpy mess of brain and blood and other red junk, aren't I? Or is it grey when it's brain? Why _do_ we call it grey matter?"

The question and the images were too much. Aerith rolled off the bed and bolted for her little bathroom. She had secured a room that used to belong to a female officer. It came with its own en suite and wasn't as austere as the rooms the boys had taken.

"Better out than in!" Yuffie called after her. "You want me to hold your hair out of your face? I totally will, because that'd mean you owe me a favour."

"M'fine. Go 'way."

Yuffie huffed. "Now there's a nice howdy-doody. And after I was all concerned and caring and compassionate and stuff, too. Some people are so ungrateful. Just for that, I hereby legally claim your share of dinner as compensation." She spun on her heel, but not before Aerith heard her murmur, "Now to see if Squall's share is up for grabs too."

* * *

_To Be Continued ..._


	4. Memories, Dreams and Bad Coffee

.

* * *

**4. Memories, Dreams and Bad Coffee**

* * *

_The air is cold and sharp. The shovels can't penetrate the ground at first. In some countries it's customary to dig graves before the day of the funeral, but not in Radiant Garden. Here family members all pitch in to carry their loved one to their final resting place, and then bury them with their own hands – literally, if you're a real traditionalist. Nobody's sure why this is. Some whisper it was invented during the war, but the war itself is only ever whispered about. Lord Ansem hasn't banned talking about it – he wouldn't – but he might as well. Nobody talks about the war or what the Garden was like before it. If you want to know you have to read the records in the back of the library where nobody goes. _

_He watches the three burials, not sure what to think. He keeps his face impassive out of habit. Still, his mind feels like a box of agitated frogs with an ill-fitting lid. One mother is crying. He feels sorry for her. He knows he should feel sorry for her son, too, but he just … can't. And that scares him. Bullies are still people, right? You should still feel something when a person dies, even if they made your life miserable while they were alive. _

_Then again, which is worse: feeling nothing or feeling happy they're gone?_

_One, two, three, and then they're filling in the holes. He watches impassively. Everybody is ranged in rows. It's perverse, really – so many strong young bodies watching a handful of people do the hard labour, as if worried they'll get their dress uniforms dirty. _

_His collar pinches. He resists the urge to slide a finger between it and his neck. Despite the cold he's sweating and it sticks to his skin. When they finally break ranks and head back he does it, but it doesn't help. He still feels like he can't breathe._

"_You okay, kid?"_

_He looks up. "Yes, Commander."_

_The Commander looks like he wants to get out of there too. That's comforting, actually. At least he's not the only one. "First funeral?" The Commander is obviously just filling in the silence. _

_Weird. Shouldn't he be walking with the other adults? Lord Ansem doesn't travel in a carriage, but walks on foot with his people. The other officials trail alongside or behind him like a pennant. _

"_No, sir." He takes a moment, and then says softly, "Second. My mother's was my first."_

"_Oh." The Commander blinks. Or at least he looks like he would, but it's difficult to tell since he keeps his head forward and all that's on show this side is his eye-patch. It's a great show of trust, displaying your blind spot to someone. _

_Maybe that's why he's talking about his mother when he never, ever talks about her. _

"_She died when I was six. A riding accident. She rode dragons."_

"_That's dangerous stuff."_

"_She was used to it. She lived for it, my dad says. Knew everything there was to know about them." Except how to survive when one has a heart attack in the air and nosedives into the ground. He shakes his head, trying to dislodge the thought. "I don't really remember her, or the funeral. After she died, my dad changed his last name to hers and we just sort of … got on with things. It doesn't seem weird to me, not having a mother."_

"_Huh." The Commander sounds like he doesn't know what to say. He's not really great with words anyway. _

_He kind of likes that about the Commander. His dad is a practised speech-maker and diplomat – he has to be, working so closely alongside Lord Ansem – but the Commander was forged in battle and has little patience or talent for subtlety. _

_Another dress uniform approaches, a frown on the face above it. The Commander is drawn away, but nods a goodbye. _

_He nods back, wondering why his chest feels suddenly lighter than when he was staring at coffins and wondering how those three boys died on what should have been just routine field manoeuvres. _

* * *

"Squaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!"

Leon felt the weight cannon into his chest as the cry cannoned into his ears. All the air was crushed out of him, but he didn't bother wondering what or who his attacker was. He was too busy rebuking himself for allowing someone to surprise him while he was asleep. His responses were usually far too good for that.

Draped sideways across his midsection, Yuffie folded her arms under her chin and grinned. "You actually looked surprised for a second there."

"Get. Off."

"You know you're not supposed to sleep if you've hit your head, right?"

"Aerith took care of the concussion."

"Since right now she's making a call on the big white telephone, I wouldn't rely on her skills too much today. She might be off her game."

"Aerith's sick?"

"Duh. Or did you think that green skin was a new type of rouge?" Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Men. All the perceptiveness of a breeze block. Hey, are you hungry?"

He was about to say no when he realised he was actually starving. Yuffie looked a little disappointed when he said so, but soon brightened. She beat a tattoo on the mattress with the flats of her hands. She was like a little kid who'd thought her playmate wasn't coming over, then discovered she was mistaken. Leon didn't misinterpret her invading his bed. With Yuffie it was just another indication that the rules governing polite behaviour in everyone else didn't apply to her world – like a locked door.

"Hairgrip?" he asked, shoving her off him.

Yuffie snorted. "And be a walking cliché? Puh-lease."

"Needle?"

"Not since it melted in that lock thanks to one of Malificent's booby-traps. Ponytail threatened to never make fudge-cake again unless I left her sewing basket alone. One more guess and then you forfeit. And you know what that means." She waggled her eyebrows.

"You're not getting my dessert."

"Spoilsport. You'll owe me a favour, then."

"Fine." It was one of the many little rituals they'd developed after living together for so long. Originally it was to help Yuffie further her own ninja skills, but now it had become a game designed to pull him out of himself and get her extra sugar. Leon tapped his chin in thought. "Something from inside your communicator."

Her face fell, but perked somewhat frantically. She could see her second dessert slipping away. "Yeah, but which -"

"The transmitter pin."

"Damn." Her expression was so melodramatically glum that it eased the tension still pressing against the backs of his eyes. "Anyhoo, anyhee and anyhow, lunch is ready and I took time out to come fetch your sorry butt, so get said butt downstairs or sit down to an empty plate and a full-bellied ninja."

"Where do you put it all?"

"It's brain-food. I have a very active brain. It's full of schemes and pranks and other fun stuff."

Leon got up and ran a hand through his hair. The short nap hadn't refreshed him much. He recalled fragments of his dream and frowned. He had been back in Radiant Garden, still a teenager training to be a Royal Guard, which made him think it had been more memory than actual dream. He hated when that happened. Still, at least it hadn't been about the night the Garden fell. Years of waking up from those blood-drenched nightmares would have driven him insane a long time ago, if not for the presence of his friends to give wordless comfort and a reason for carrying on.

He glanced out of the window and wondered where Cloud was right now. The trip into the dungeons put him uppermost in Leon's thoughts – or at least uppermost in the thoughts he didn't shove immediately away again. Before taking on the duty of fighting the Heartless, Leon would have drowned in his own guilt and grief if not for his friends giving him purpose. Cloud hadn't had anyone there to distract him when he woke from whatever nightmares that last night in the Garden had left him with. Would things have been different if he'd been in Traverse Town with them? If Leon hadn't listened to Cid and abandoned Cloud in that cell, would things have turned out the way they had? Leon could feel himself falling towards a familiar pattern of what-ifs and recriminations, but it was hard to stop.

"Ground Control to Spaceship Squall; come in Squall." Yuffie waved a hand in front of his face, startling him. "Wow, that's twice you failed to notice me. My ninjatastic skillz – spelled with a z, because misspelling is sometimes cool n' neat n' nifty instead of bad English – must be even more ninjatastic than ever."

Discomfited, though not sure why, Leon brushed past her with a muttered, "You shouldn't take apart your communicator. If it's not working and you get into trouble you won't be able to call for back-up."

"Pish-posh. I'm ninjatastic enough to take care of myself."

"Yuffie." A warning note entered his voice.

She rolled her eyes like any teenager being told a truth they didn't like but couldn't deny. "Okay, okay, I'll ask Old Fart to fix it. In completely unrelated news, did you know they make the loudest screeching noise in the _world_ when you pry them open with salad tongs? Like a cat with a firecracker up its butt, or a hamster being stretched between two Rottweilers. We should totally build that noise into the defence systems instead of just sticking those Claymores everywhere."

"Those Claymores have saved a lot of lives."

"Yeah, and so have 'Don't Walk' signs, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. There always is. Well," she amended, canting her hips and striking a pose, "apart from me, of course, but we can't all be perfect."

For the first time he noticed the tongs. They knocked against one hip as she moved, hooked through a loop on her shorts. Next to them were also an old-fashioned can opener and a tiny plastic tea strainer. Yuffie claimed she could turn anything into a weapon, but usually either ended up using things as part of her pranks, or abandoning them in odd places. Before now Leon had found drawing pins in the bread bin, votive candles in the gutter, the pendulum of a grandfather clock down the back of the couch, and a terracotta duck in the bathroom. And those weren't even the most bizarre things.

He considered commenting, and then decided he didn't have the energy. "Get your communicator repaired," he said instead.

Yuffie stuck out her tongue. "Maybe I should call you the Incredible Grump, instead of Squall."

* * *

Cid's beverage talents were bipolar. He made the best tea and the worst coffee in the universe. The tea could soothe a savage beast. The coffee was so strong you could practically turn the mug over and pat to make it slide free. Even the smell was enough to make your eyeballs rotate, so Aerith knew he was there without having to raise her head, and knew what he had brought her.

"Best thing for a screwed up stomach," he said without preamble. "And a thick head."

She heard the clink of ceramic on her bedside table. It was odd for him to say anything. When he was being considerate he usually did it fast, like yanking off a band-aid to make it hurt for the shortest possible time. It wasn't Cid's way to linger over small kindnesses. It was even odder for him not to leave immediately after performing them.

She raised her face from her pillow. She'd left the door open, so he'd been able to walk right in. He was staring around the room, squinting at things like they offended him. There was nothing chintzy, and the slight feminine touches were just that – slight. She wondered what he saw that she couldn't. Then she wondered whether she'd feel better or worse if she drank the coffee.

"Ain't never been in here before. Not since we got back. Didn't realise which room you'd picked. These used to be Captain Trepe's quarters."

Aerith froze. Captain Trepe had been Tifa's teacher and dorm warden. Tifa never made it to picking a mentor or a specialist weapon, but she'd had her favourite teachers, and Captain Trepe was definitely up there. She was also the woman Commander Braig had decapitated when the last vestiges of his sanity tore off like spider-webs. Tifa had seen the body when it was still pumping gouts of blood. Many were the times she had woken in the middle of the night, startling them all awake with dreams of seeing it happen, even though she'd arrived when it was already too late.

Aerith understood then and understood now. It was hard to encounter violent death, but even worse to see it up close, and the worst thing in the world when it involved someone you cared about. Quistis Trepe's body had haunted Aerith's dreams for years. It still made appearances when she was stressed or overworked.

"She was a good woman, Captain Trepe," Cid went on. "Not much of a woman, though, when I come to think about it. Barely older than the cadets she trained. One of them wonder-kids who hop-skipped ahead because she was so damn good at what she did." He shook his head. "Didn't deserve what happened to her."

Aerith watched Cid carefully, beginning to understand why he was there. "Today seems a day for old ghosts." When he didn't say anything she added, "You went into the dungeons, didn't you?"

"It was either that or stay in the kitchen and stick a fork in that brat."

Aerith wondered whether Yuffie had done anything special or been just generally annoying. She suspected Cid was just deflecting. He hated to admit he had an emotional depth greater than a wet pavement. She could tell he was wrestling with his facial expressions, trying not to let old grief sneak out through his lowered brows.

He had been there too. He had gone into the room where the empty Heartless containers were kept, to help them rescue Leon after Braig snatched him. Cid had seen Quistis Trepe's mutilated remains – hands gone, eyes staring down the stump of her own neck as blood splashed her face. Aerith would never forget the sight of blood dripping off eyelashes like thick red tears. As she recalled, Cid had emerged liberally smeared in Quistis Trepe's blood after he and Commander Braig brawled in it. Cid had been trying to give everyone a chance to escape, recklessly endangering his own life to save theirs. He'd been stained with his own blood, too, where Braig had shot off his heel and put another bullet in his knee. It was a wonder he'd been able to leave under his own power at all, and spoke volumes for his indomitable stubbornness They'd all left that room with scars – those you could see and those you couldn't.

It was easy to forget Cid had lost everything too. He hadn't had any family in Radiant Garden, but he'd had friends, colleagues and students. He wasn't like Leon; he didn't hide behind stoicism or vent by destroying Heartless. Cid just chewed harder on his toothpick and set to fixing whatever was busted, building whatever needed building, and generally making their lives run smoother in the day-to-day stuff.

He talked about what had happened when they asked, but he never brought it up himself, and he always turned things so they would talk about what was bothering _them_. He disliked talking about his own problems. Cid wasn't heartfelt discussions and crying jags, he was opening pickle jars and oiling squeaky door hinges. He found comfort in doing jobs with his hands, the same way Aerith had with her garden and Tifa had with her _kata_. He'd never look that deeply into it, but to Aerith it was as though he was trying to put together, piece by piece, enough things to replace what he'd lost.

Or maybe he just needed to still feel useful after his injuries – and her inability to heal them properly in the beginning – made him useless as a warrior.

Aerith looked at the mug of coffee. Though she still felt queasy, she pulled herself up, took a breath, and downed a mouthful. It tasted awful, but she was prepared and managed not to wince too much. So much of life was about small gestures, after all.

"No need to pull your punches, girl," Cid said slyly. "I know it tastes like bitumen dissolved in gerbil piss."

She released a breath that burned her lips but had nothing to do with temperature. "Not quite how I would've put it."

"That's 'cause you're a prude."

"I am not."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I'm _not_," she insisted.

The eyebrow went higher.

She pursed her lips. She wasn't. She'd lived with Cid for so long that she was well-used to his language. She barely batted an eyelid anymore. Just because she didn't use it herself didn't make her a prude. She was anything but prudish! Hadn't she been the one to tell Yuffie about the birds and the bees because all the men were too embarrassed? Or at least she'd tried to, until she realised Yuffie had already asked all the motherly types around Traverse Town and probably knew more about it than she did? True, when they'd got to the lectures about reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases during her healer training, she'd blushed as much as any of the girls in the room, but she'd been barely thirteen years old! Sex and boys had both been bigger mysteries than the meaning of life at that age. Plus, it was difficult not to get embarrassed when you were shown slides of genital warts, herpes sores and strange cross-section diagrams of people having sex, all when you were so full of raging hormones that even the word made you go red.

Aerith froze for the second time in as many minutes. Unbidden, her mind was counting.

Cid noticed. "You gonna throw up again?"

"No, I just …" She blinked at the coffee. "Hey, _no_. Wow, you weren't kidding. I think this may have knocked my digestive system out cold."

He nodded, as if he'd just been waiting for her to agree he was right. Then he folded his arms and glanced around the room again. His brows lowered.

Aerith pushed away all other thoughts and concentrated on him. "How well did you know Captain Trepe?"

Cid hesitated, but only for a moment. "Not very. She was Royal Guards. I was Air Force. Our training programmes didn't exactly get along."

She winced. "I'd noticed."

The rivalry between the various training programmes had been legendary – although not as volatile as the one between them and the academic programmes. The Science Institute, in particular, had rankled, although that was mainly because the man in charge, Professor Even, was so opinionated and loud about anything un-scholarly. Aerith was glad Healer House had never allowed themselves to be dragged into it.

"But we talked in the mess hall," Cid said. "Maybe a handful of times. She was dedicated. Loved teaching. Born for it, I reckon. Protective of people she cared about. Really cut up when Captain Fair was declared missing – when those fuckers kidnapped him and took his fucking heart." His expression darkened. "General Sephiroth didn't have to look far for someone to go with him when he went storming off to fight Xehanort and those other fuckers. It probably didn't even occur to her to run away and save her own damn skin. Only it …" Cid trailed off.

_Only it got her killed_, Aerith finished silently. _Caring got her killed, just like it got Captain Fair killed_.

It hadn't been difficult to figure out the connection between Captain Fair checking on an unwell Commander Braig and going missing the same day. Yet another thing Leon blamed himself for. Captain Fair had liked him, so it had seemed natural that, when Leon went to a mentoring session and found Commander Braig half-collapsed, he went to Captain Fair for help. If he hadn't, if he had gone to someone else, or run straight to an infirmary, or even Healer House itself; if he at least gone with Captain Fair instead of leaving the smiling Sword Master alone with that psychopath, it wouldn't have happened. Maybe he'd still be alive. Or maybe he would've died when Captain Trepe did. Maybe in her place. Maybe in the Great Hall with Captain Reno. Maybe Captain Fair would still have had his heart ripped out, but by a Heartless instead of by Xehanort's sick machine, and while defending his cadets instead of strapped to a table. Dead was still dead. What-ifs were a corrosive and self-destructive kind of guilt.

So many on that list of dead. Cid had known all those people, and unlike herself, Leon, Tifa or Cloud, he had known them as colleagues. However tenuous, Cid's connection put him on a different level, and gave his grief and guilt and different flavour. What was he seeing when he looked around Quistis Trepe's old quarters? His own fate in a different what-if.

"Cid."

"Yeah?"

"I need to get into Healer House."

He looked at her, surprised. "What, right now?"

She nodded. He needed to feel useful and she needed to get inside. "Right now."

"That windbag wizard ain't here to break any enchantments on the place." Cid 's teeth skinned back on 'enchantments', like it tasted bad, or caused him personal offence. Maybe it did. He hated magic.

"Can we at least check it out? I have a tester I can use on the door."

Cid stared at her. Then he sighed, obviously assuming she wanted to get into Healer House because she was ill and couldn't use her powers on herself. The library there was full of remedies they'd gone without until now because her healing had served instead. "All right. But only if you finish that coffee."

Grimacing, Aerith pinched her nose, raised the mug to her lips, tipped back her head, and wondered how long it took to regrow taste buds.

* * *

_To Be Continued …_


	5. Something Wicked This Way Comes

.

* * *

**5. Something Wicked This Way Comes**

* * *

Healer House was on the opposite side of Radiant Garden. A large courtyard and grounds sat between it and the rest of the castle. In its heyday it had been a hub of activity, with healers coming and going at all times and one or two pottering around in the gardens at all hours of the day or night. This was where Aerith had gained her love of gardening and learned to work out her frustrations by creating instead of destroying. It was also where she'd lived, which made it peculiar that she didn't feel like she was coming home.

She and Cid fought their way through the overgrown hedges to the front door. The whole place was in terrible disrepair. Over a decade of neglect had taken its toll, as nature reclaimed everything it could. Branches of trees had broken the windows and grown right into the building. Long grass grew everywhere, including the roof and drainpipes. Ivy swathed the walls, sucking moisture from the brickwork and crumbling it in places. Even the foundations seemed to sag like an abandoned dog, too weary to even wag its tail anymore.

"You'd never know how beautiful this place used to be," she murmured.

Cid was more practical. "You'll never get any fucking wind-up to throw that tester. Not without breaking your arm." He unpeeled a vine that had caught on his sleeve as he walked by, yanking him off his feet like a dog at the end of its leash. "Fucking things have got a mind of their own."

The smell was overpowering. Everything smelled so … green. Aerith tried to think of a better word but couldn't. It smelled green like plants, but also green like mould. Would the library even be serviceable anymore? If rain had gotten inside and damaged the more delicate texts they'd be useless, and the healers had always been such a traditional bunch that not even half had been uploaded onto the central computer system.

"Never been in here before," Cid said, glaring up at the wooden double doors. No metal for Healer House. As Aerith recalled, that emphasis on the organic had always been a draw. Cid probably hated it for that very reason.

"First time for everything," she murmured. "Hold these branches back for me?"

He did, grudgingly. "Used to be a decorated captain, now I'm a damn servant …"

She ignored his protests. There wasn't any real vehemence to them. Making sure not to accidentally elbow him in the nose, she drew back her arm and threw the tester.

Cid blinked as the dust cleared. "Well, fuck me."

Aerith declined to make the comment Yuffie would have. "There's no spell on it."

"That we can see, at any rate. Stand back, girlie." He pushed forward and tentatively placed a hand on one door. It swung open with barely a push. "Fucking thing ain't even locked. Real great security job you healers had going on here."

"Well it wasn't as though the others had the chance to lock up and hide the key under the mat before they left," Aerith said, a little testily.

Cid fell silent. She instantly felt bad.

"I'm sorry -"

"Don't be. C'mon, let's go in and take a look around."

It was just how she remembered. Time had dimmed her memories, making them fuzzy at the edges like an old filmstrip, but the moment she set foot inside Healer House every detail came flooding back. She just stood there for a whole minute, taking in how much the interior _hadn't_ changed when she'd been preparing herself for how much it _had_.

"It's like Maleficent never came in here at all."

"Maybe she didn't. Why would she? Not the type to care too much if her minions got sick or injured. Didn't you ever try to get in this place before to check it out?"

"I was a little busy."

"Too busy to come back?"

She avoided his eyes. She'd had time; she'd just convinced herself Maleficent must have placed spells that would keep her out. Stupid, really. She hadn't actually checked to see if that was true. Why? Because she was frightened about what she might find inside – or who? Because it was easier than going back and confronting the past she'd left behind, and the future she'd had cut short? Because she didn't want it confirmed that the place she'd always tagged as her sanctuary had become something evil like the rest of the Garden? All of the above?

"We've all been busy," she said lamely. "And there was no real need to come back before. We had other priorities. More pressing things to take care of …" She trailed off. Was she fooling him? With Cid it was so difficult to tell. "This way," she said, making a sharp right.

Things sprang at her, old and familiar: that shiny bit of panelling where generations of healers had trailed their hands as they went past; the square of protruding carpet everyone complained about until they got used to stepping over it like can-can dancers; the large windows that let in so much light there used to be no need for bulbs, and only candles when the moon went behind a cloud. The tree outside had grown unchecked. Its branches obscured the light, making it cave-dark here now. For some reason this hit Aerith hardest – harder, even, than the holding cell. That had stuck a needle in her heart, but this drove a stake through it.

Sudden tears gathered in her eyes.

"You okay, squirt?" Cid asked dubiously.

"I'm fine." She was glad it was so dark, if only so she could wipe her eyes without him seeing. "The Scroll Room's this way."

"Scrolls? As in parchment and quills?" He sounded aghast.

"There are some in there, yes – or at least there were. It was called that back when scrolls were _all_ it held, and the name just sort of stuck. It's actually more of a multimedia and print library. Or it was," she corrected herself. "I'm not sure how much of the contents survived. Obviously."

"Obviously."

"Just because Maleficent didn't put booby-traps on the door doesn't mean she didn't ransack what she wanted."

"Obviously."

"It's not like Healer House is worth any less than the rest of the castle. It's not some poor relation."

"Did I say it was?"

Aerith paused before speaking again. "It's hard. Coming back. I thought it was difficult just being in the castle again. Going into the Great Hall and seeing all the leftovers of the ball, and then visiting the dungeons today: I thought that was as hard as it would get. But this … this is harder." She touched the wall and said in a small voice, "I was so happy here."

Cid grunted.

She shook her head and pushed on. No time to cry. Find what she needed now; cry like a baby who's lost its security blanket later. If Leon could face painful reminders of his old life without cracking, so could she.

"This way. It's not far now."

She ignored the way Cid's grunt sounded more like a snort of mirthless laughter.

* * *

When they finally left Aerith clutched a pile of books. They were dusty with age and abandonment, but they looked likely candidates for what she needed. Cid walked ahead of her, remembering the path they'd taken to get in and even more eager to leave than she was. When they were halfway through the jungle outside, however, he stopped.

"You see that?"

Aerith looked around. "See what?"

"That answers that question." Cid narrowed his eyes at the undergrowth. "Thought I saw someone. Lurking, like."

There was one likely candidate for the verb 'lurk'. "Yuffie?"

"Might've been. Didn't get a good look. Might be nuthin'." Cid's toothpick moved from one side of his mouth to the other. "Might be something. Never can tell in this bastard place. Doubtful it's a Heartless. Didn't move the right way and it ain't attacked us already. Plus they travel in packs. This was just one thing, I'm pretty sure."

That was small comfort. As the Nobodies and Maleficent had proved, the Heartless were deadly, but they were far from the worst things out there. Aerith shivered. She felt much better than she had earlier, but there was a big difference between 'better' and 'well'. The books pressed against her chest as her arms tightened around them.

"Let's get inside," she said. "Leon will want to know if there's someone – or something – hanging around. We don't usually come near this area, so it's possible it needs investigating. At the very least he'll want to check it out himself."

Cid nodded. Odd how he and his wartime credentials still deferred to Leon so much. There was just something about Leon, despite the damage he had taken over the years, which inspired trust. Some people were natural leaders; people you'd trust with your life and your future because you knew they'd always put you first. Leon was definitely one of those people.

Cid kept close to her, eyes darting everywhere as they left the grounds of Healer House and returned to the castle.

* * *

Leon pressed a hand against the dirt.

"Are you channelling messages from the earthworms or something?"

He gritted his teeth.

"Hey, that was an actual question, y'know. As in requiring an answer?"

"Yuffie, I'm trying to concentrate."

"I know."

"Then will you please be quiet?"

"I just don't get what you're trying to concentrate _on_. Earwigs don't generally give good gossip, and I can't remember the last time a Heartless investigation hinged on the testimony of a ladybug."

"I'm not talking to insects -"

"Thank goodness for that. Because that's just _nuts_."

"- I'm reading the ground for clues."

Yuffie blinked. "I take it back. _That's_ just nuts. Leon, I know you've had a bump on the noggin recently, so let me explain a few things: you read _books_, not the ground. The ground is for walking on. And possibly doing handsprings across. And for holding picnics if you can get a blanket to put on it. Not reading. Reading needs words. Unless someone wrote a message in the dirt with a stick, there's nothing to read here."

One of Leon's lower molars made a curious squeaky noise as it rubbed against an upper. "Yuffie, shut up." He made a great effort to block out her chatter and concentrate. "Things are disturbed here."

"Things are always disturbed around here." Yuffie planted her hands on her hips and stared at the turrets of the castle, just visible above the trees. "It's a disturbing kinda place."

"I _mean_ someone has been here and disturbed things."

"How can you tell? You weren't out here before to know what this place looked like _un_disturbed."

He pointed. "Heartless don't leave footprints, and Aerith and Cid said they stuck to the path. People from town hate the castle and wouldn't come up here unless you paid them. Ergo, we've had an intruder. Someone heavy enough to leave an imprint, but in motion enough to scuff it up, which indicates they may not have been spying so much as travelling through."

"Bummer." Yuffie crouched beside him. "You can really tell all that from dirt?"

"Your ninja training was really patchy, wasn't it?"

"I like cutting things, stabbing things, throwing pointy objects and kicking butt. I'm not so great with the small-deal stuff."

"Like basic tracking skills."

"You said it yourself; you can't track Heartless with traditional skills."

"Yeah," Leon admitted. "But whatever was here, it wasn't a Heartless. See? Heartless pass through the scenery like shadows. It's how they sink into the ground and pop out of rocks when we fight them."

"Yeah, I hate when they do that! It really harshes my mellow."

Leon paused to stare at her in bewilderment. For anyone else it would have been an expression of irritation potent enough to melt your fillings. Yuffie, however, just patted his arm.

"Don't worry," she said soothingly. "You're not up on current lingo, but it's nothing to bother your pretty little head about. It just means you're getting old. I'll start looking for zimmer frames for your next birthday."

His jaw tightened into actual irritation. "The undergrowth here has been snapped in places, which means our intruder was solid. The outline of this footprint tells us it was probably human, or at least human-shaped."

"You can see all that?" Yuffie peered. "Seriously? Man, I'm crap outside a cityscape."

Leon sighed. "Why are you even out here? Recon doesn't need more than one person."

"I'm guarding you."

"Excuse me?"

"Deafness: another sign of aging."

"Guarding me against _what_?"

"Against yourself."

"_Excuse me_?"

"You got hit with one heck of a Bounce-Back today. I'm just making sure you don't, like, collapse from an aneurysm or something Ponytail missed. And if there really had been something bad lurking out here, you would totally have needed me to save your butt from it."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Then he wondered why and rolled them anyway. "Yuffie, I don't need a bodyguard."

"Shyeahright."

"Yuffie -"

"Indulge me, okay? I was worried. Ergo – and that's a totally cool word, by the way, which I intend to make great use of in future so I can sound all intelligent and junk -"

"Yuffie-"

"_Ergo_," she went on, "I wanted to make sure you'd be all hunky-dory out here checking out bad stuff and invaders and potential heebie-jeebies. 'Cause like we discussed earlier, you can be a real grumpy, uncommunicative, emotionally-stunted and depressing pain in the ass, but you're _our_ grumpy, uncommunicative, emotionally-stunted and depressing pain in the ass. Yeah, yeah, you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, you're a big boy now, you have your gunblade and your mad skillz and your squillions of belts to slap enemies with if all else fails, but in a real help-me-help-me-I'm-gonna-die crisis, you really can't beat having the Great Ninja Yuffie at your side." She grinned. "Plus, I'll be billing you for my services as your bodyguard, walking companion and general source of entertainment."

"That was almost selfless until the last part." Leon thought for a moment. "You're still not getting my share of dessert anytime soon."

Yuffie's grin morphed into a pout. "Meanie."

His chest felt both heavy and light for a moment, watching her and replaying what she'd just said. Then a flicker in the corner of his eye caught his attention.

Was someone watching them? He automatically fell into a combat stance and unhooked his gunblade from its brace. "Yuffie, get behind me."

"I say again: shyeahright." She stood beside him, her giant shuriken at the ready.

Leon's grip constricted. "Yuffie, I'm serious."

"I'm not some damsel who needs protecting, Squall."

His right eye stung like a piece of grit had gotten into it. He blinked rapidly, but not enough to miss how Yuffie suddenly ran forward. A flash of panic seared through him like he'd been stabbed. Her recklessness and refusal to let him protect her would get one – or both – of them killed.

"Yuffie!"

She threw herself at the enemy … and hugged it?

Leon stared. Not an enemy. Enemies didn't tend to hug back, or laugh like that. He straightened up as well, lowering the tip of his gunblade. "Tifa?"

"Hey, Leon." She set Yuffie down and gave him a tentative half-smile and a finger-wave. "Long time no see."

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

.


	6. The First Cut Is the Deepest

.

* * *

**6. The First Cut Is the Deepest**

* * *

"Cloud's not here?" Tifa frowned. "But I trailed him right to the border of this world."

Cid examined his mangled toothpick, snapped it in half and tossed it into the trash. "Ain't seen that kid in a while."

"Not since he ran off to battle Sephiroth and you went after him," Yuffie added. "Since you didn't radio back he'd been turned into strawberry jam we were kinda hoping that meant he was okay."

Tifa eyed her warily. "Yuffie."

"Yeah?"

"Could you not do that, please."

"Do what?"

"That."

Yuffie grinned. "I don't know what you could possibly mean."

"She means quit juggling with the kitchen knives, brat," Cid snapped.

"Oh, this?" With a flick of her wrist, Yuffie sent each of the three knives thudding into the dartboard on a cupboard door. "Well why didn't you say so?" She examined the board. "Bull's-eye. Natch."

Tifa, rather than react with horror or panic, just nodded. Living with Yuffie for any amount of time soon inured you to behaviour some off-worlders would consider inappropriate. "I'd wondered what that was doing there."

"Well it sure isn't to play darts." Yuffie plopped into the seat beside her at the table. "It's hard to get anyone to play games or anything around here. They're all doomy and gloomy and junk. Not one fun-lover amongst them."

Cid growled. Leon rolled his eyes.

"What about the Gullwings?"

Yuffie's expression instantly darkened. Her relationship with the three treasure-hunting fairies was, at best, antagonistic. Leon had to admit, their allegiance with Maleficent hadn't exactly endeared them to anyone in the Restoration Committee, but their defection, plus their part in the battle against the Heartless, had at least made them tolerable. Likewise their habit of never sticking around for very long. They were always off somewhere, seeking treasure for their Trove – which nobody actually knew the location of. That seemed to bother Yuffie most of all. One of her recurring schemes was trying to discover where they kept all their stuff. Presumably so she could steal it, thus punishing them for all the times they'd insulted or successfully pranked her. Nobody had ever managed to prank her except the Gullwings.

"Razzin' frazzin' stupid fairies with their syrup and their feathers and their horrible little squeaky laughs …"

Tifa winced. "They got you again?"

"I hate Rikku. Yuna and Paine I can tolerate, but that Rikku has a long-overdue date with the sharp end of a kunai."

Leon leaned forward to bring the conversation back on track. It was good to see Tifa again. He liked having the people he cared about where he knew he could protect them, even if they _could_ take care of themselves. Probably better than he could, he thought, remembering Tifa's incredible strength. The after-effects of the experimental potion she'd stolen all those years ago were more far-reaching than even Merlin could've guessed. Still, the urge to shield his friends from harm rose inside him once more.

"You've been tracking Cloud this whole time?"

"For the most part, yes. I lost him a couple of times, but yesterday he was still alive and headed back here."

"Cloud's coming?"

They all looked up to see Aerith in the doorway, a large book open in her hands. It was so big, in fact, that she could to use both palms and her forearms to balance it, and it technically entered the room before she did.

"Whoa, Ponytail. A little light reading?" Yuffie whistled.

"Cloud's on his way here?" she asked, ignoring the remark. Her eyes instantly found Tifa. Something about her expression changed. Leon wasn't sure what, only that he'd never seen it in this context before. He would have expected Aerith to look pleased at Tifa's safe return, or at least relieved, but instead she looked … well, panicked. It flashed in her eyes and faded in the same instant, but he was sure he'd seen it.

"Hello to you too," Tifa said. "And yes. Or at least he was." She looked around, as if Cloud might suddenly leap out of the fridge or rappel through the window at the sound of his name. "I'm a little surprised he's not here already, actually."

Aerith glanced down at her book, and then back up at the group. Her skin was still fish-belly white and had that unhealthy clammy look to it. "Oh."

"Are you feeling any better?" Leon asked.

"What? Oh. Yes, a little."

"Ponytail's been launching the food shuttle," Yuffie announced in the kind of voice usually reserved for reading out who got the most Heartless during a battle. "Blowing her biscuits. Offering sacrifices to Ralph, the porcelain god. Pledging her allegiance to vomitola-khomaini. Spraying dinner. Yodelling in colour. Whistling a solid tune. Bending and sending -"

"Yuffie, we get the picture!"

"Y'know, I never realised before how many different ways you can say someone's throwing up." Yuffie stroked her chin as though she had an invisible beard. "I may have to write all these down for future reference."

Cid made a noise like a dog at the end of its choke-chain.

"Should you be on your feet if you're not feeling well?" Tifa was also fully aware that healers couldn't heal themselves.

"I'm okay," Aerith said. "It comes and goes."

"Emphasis on _goes _-"

"Yuffie!" Leon glared at her.

"You've got a really big wrinkle between your eyes where you scowl so much, Squall." Yuffie leaned back in her seat. "Hey, Tifa, since you're back does that mean I don't have to go on patrol tonight? 'Cause you should totally catch up on all the turns you missed while you were off playing Cloud Catcher – which is like a dog-catcher, only with more swords and inter-world travel, and less barking and pooches humping your leg."

Tifa looked down at her half-finished sandwich. It was what was commonly known as a doorstop, but which Cid just called a 'siddown, shaddup and finish the fucking thing before it goes stale'. She was less than halfway through. "Most people who come home after a long time away get a grace period."

"We're not most people." Yuffie waggled her eyebrows. Then she caught Cid and Leon's twin expressions and sighed. "Razzin' frazzin' makin' me do all the work when we've already got Claymores all over the friggin' place…"

"The whole point of patrolling is to make sure those Claymores are all in working order and we ain't got nuthin' on the horizon needs worrying about before we go to bed," Cid said. "Sorry if the safety of the whole Committee don't agree with your delicate sleep patterns, brat." He sounded as sincere as a politician promising to give up golf.

Yuffie's articulate response was to stick out her tongue and pull the lower lid of her eye at him. "So Tifa," she snapped around to face her, "enquiring minds wanna know: what were you doing out by Healer House, making us think we had some freaky-deaky intruder? The landing pad not good enough for you anymore?"

Tifa frowned a little, but replied, "The Highwind's guidance system took a hit a while back. I've not been quite flying blind since then, but it's close. If I didn't know the route here so well, I would've had problems getting back this time."

"What happened?"

"Combination of a meteor shower, space pirates and the reception from natives on a world where 'technology' means tying a rock to a big stick. Don't ask," she added, holding up a hand.

"I most certainly _will_ ask," Yuffie retorted. "You always bring back the best stories. Cloud goes everywhere, but he never freaking _tells_ us about it. This one sounds like a real keeper, too. C'mon, Teef, what happened?"

It didn't take much to persuade Tifa. After a few minutes of wheeling and pleading, she gave in to Yuffie's demands with a single proviso. "Can I at least finish my sandwich first?"

Yuffie pursed her lips. "If you really have to."

"I've been living off dried food and whatever I can scrounge up in the worlds I land in. Yeah, I really have to."

"Did you have to eat curried eyeballs again?" Gruesome excitement poured off Yuffie. She always loved Tifa's stories of dreadful off-world meals.

Watching them, Leon could almost believe it was ten years ago, and Tifa was a teenager telling bedtime stories of heroes and heroines to a little girl to distract her from her nightmares. Come to think of it, Yuffie's desire to become a fighter was probably influenced by Tifa's stories, who always saved the day, beat the bad guy, and never let anyone down.

"Worse," Tifa said with a shudder.

Yuffie's mouth dropped open. "Even worse than when you had to eat dragon scrotum so those Lizard Warriors didn't sacrifice you to their god?" At Tifa's expression she propped her elbow on the table and let her chin fall onto her fist. "Aw, man! You get all the fun."

Leon would hardly call following Cloud from world to world, trying to help him and constantly being rejected, 'fun'. Tifa had a very special kind of courage that made him admire her more than anyone else.

The world blurred for a second. Pain blossomed in the very centre of his head.

THUMP.

"Leon?"

"Hey, Squall, you okay?"

"Leon?" Tifa abandoned her sandwich to come around the table and stand beside him. "Leon, are you all right?"

"Does he fucking look all right?" Cid moved to Leon's other side, hemming him in and making him feel far too crowded. "Kid, can you hear me?"

" … Yes."

"You hit the deck pretty hard there."

"Your forehead bounced right off the table! How many brain cells do you reckon that killed?"

"Brat, you ain't helping."

If he hadn't felt as though his head was trying to squeeze his brains through his ears like meat in a mincer, Leon might have heard the alarm in Yuffie's voice. Yuffie didn't wear anxiety the same way other people did. It took longer for her smart-mouthed ways to crack open and regular panic to slide free. Following the few seconds of blinding pain, followed by his face's impact with the tabletop, he was in no frame of mind to notice her worry. He was more concerned with breathing through his mouth, since his nose was full of blood.

"… Ow …"

"Can you raise your head?" Aerith's voice now, closer than the others'. Soothing coolness radiated from her finger on his temple, finding the hottest, most painful places in his head and easing them.

"Do you reckon that's a good idea, Ponytail? You're all sick yourself."

"I'm fine. I won't make a mistake. If there's anything truly wrong, I'll heal it."

"Sure, yeah, of course, no question. We trust you, but you can't be firing on all cylinders right now, yeah? And if you zonko yourself from exhaustion we're all in the shitter."

"I'm hardly verging on medical exhaustion, Yuffie."

"You're not looking at yourself from this side. I've seen more colour in plain yoghurt."

"Is that your way of saying you're worried about her, brat? Are you actually showing concern for another human being, or just worried your source of desserts will be outta commission for longer than your stomach can take?"

"Shut up, Old Fart, or I'll put itching powder in your undies and switch your shampoo with blue hair dye. Again."

Leon groaned. "Please. Stop. Talking." He tried raising his head. Dizziness assaulted him. His stomach gurgled rebelliously – and alarmingly. He groaned again.

"Ponytail, what's _wrong_ with him?"

Leon wouldn't have minded an answer too. He had gone from feeling fine to death's door in under a minute – or if not death's door, then at least death's driveway. Both eyes throbbed despite Aerith's help. His head felt like it was about to explode. The feeling fought against her touch like fire against water, until eventually she poured enough of her magic into him that the fire was quenched.

Leon sat up cautiously.

"Careful," Yuffie said. "You look like you'll fall over backwards if you lean too far."

Aerith's expression was troubled. It cleared when Yuffie poked her in the side. She batted the hand away and announced, "Bed rest. I prescribe lots of bed rest and absolutely _no_ patrolling until further notice."

Leon frowned. "But -"

"I'm the healer here." Her face was calm but her tone was steely. Aerith was deceptive that way – frail as rose petals until she wanted you to do something. Even Cloud did what she said when she used that tone. Maleficent herself would have thought twice about taking on Aerith in one of her I'm Right And If You Don't Agree Now You Soon Will moods. "I say you need bed rest, and lots of it. Now get upstairs before I make you."

Leon tried one more time. "But I can't just -"

"Tifa?"

Tifa sighed and cracked her knuckles.

Yuffie practically vibrated with glee. "I love it when you come home, Teef. Can you sling him over your shoulder? Huh? Can you? A real fireman's lift for Mr. Grim? Please? "

Leon knew when he was beaten. Remaining vestiges of headache and nausea helped make his decision for him. He raised his palms. "All right, all right, I'll go. But Yuffie, when you're out on patrol, remember to check the Claymores for -"

"Yes, yes, I know, I know," she said, waving away his words. "I've been doing these patrols for, like, _ever_. I think I know the drill by now."

Leon shook his head, regretted it, and left. He was so busy trying not to throw up, he failed to hear the exchange that followed as he closed the door.

"So what was the matter with him, Ponytail?"

Aerith, clearly troubled and not a little perplexed, said softly, "That's the thing; I couldn't find anything wrong."

"What?"

"He's perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with him."

"But he practically passed out just now!"

"I know. I can't understand it." Aerith shook her head. "At least if he's in one place we can keep an eye on him until I can figure out what's wrong."

"Leon, stay in one place when there's work to be done?" Tifa said incredulously.

"If he does _that_," Yuffie proclaimed, "we'll know he really is sick."

* * *

Yuffie trundled through her patrol with the air of a child doing a particularly uninspiring homework. She kicked at loose stones and shoved her hands deep in her pockets, completing the 'sullen teenager' look.

"Razzin' frazzin'," she muttered for good measure, but since there was no audience for her mad acting skillz, and she found it difficult to maintain a strop for long, by the time she reached the bailey she had started to whistle and a bounce had worked its way back into her step.

She balanced on a low wall and made her way through her rounds by means of flick-flacks, handsprings, forward walkovers and cartwheels. Walking on your feet was so overrated, especially when things were this quiet and _boring_. You had to make your own entertainment. Not that she wanted to be attacked by Heartless or anything, but Yuffie's boredom threshold was low. She paused by the once-elegant tiered fountains and eyed the height.

"I can do that." She took a running leap and landed on the first tier. "Ta-dah! Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week." She sighed and sat down. "And longer."

It wasn't that she regretted coming back to Radiant Garden, but sometimes she wanted to point out to the others that this hadn't been her home before everything went wrong. Wutai was where her memories lay, and she hadn't returned to her homeland yet. She had even suggested it, for the same reason Aerith hadn't gone into Healer House and Leon hadn't gone into the dungeons. "Except that now they've both been back," she said out loud, a note of petulance in her voice. "Major suckage."

Wutai. She had been so young when she last saw it. Mostly her memories were flashes of a child's life: the smell of cooking meat, bright flags on festival day, ladies in kimonos with hair piled on top of their heads like pretzels rising in an oven. Yuffie wasn't stupid. She knew it would be nothing like that now. That was exactly why she didn't want to go back. As long as she stayed here in Radiant Garden, Wutai would remain the bright, happy place of her childhood, whole and undamaged by Heartless or whatever – and whoever – else may have gone there after she fled to Traverse Town all those years ago.

That didn't mean she couldn't feel homesick for it, though. She propped her elbows on her thighs and plunked her chin in her hands, blowing out another sigh. Radiant Garden wasn't home. Traverse Town was more home to her than this crumbling castle.

She didn't miss her dad. It was awful, but she barely even remembered him. When the only thing you felt about a parent was guilt at forgetting their face and voice, it was better not to think about them at all, so Yuffie had spent the last of their years in exile avoiding her memories of home. Now, especially today, it was too hard to avoid them altogether. She stared down at the courtyard below the fountains and wondered whether her father would approve of what she'd done with her life.

She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn't hear anyone approach. Maybe that was because the shadow fell across her from behind, but she suddenly became aware of someone breathing and leaned backward on her hands, tipping her head back for a better look.

"Oh hey," she grinned. "I guess I should yell, but I'm glad to see _someone_ isn't mean enough to leave me patrolling this joint alone. It's hella dull out here. Dreary. Unexciting. Booooo_ring_." She leaned forward again and gestured at their surroundings. "Nothing to see here but us chickens. Hey, I didn't hear you on the stairs. Did you jump down from that terrace up there? Man oh man, and I get ragged on for jumping half that height! Double standards, that's what it is. I'm being oppressed! Well," she added, "aren't you going to say something? Defend yourself? Tell me off? Not that I dislike the sound of my own voice, but a girl's gotta have someone to bounce off for proper witty repartee. How can I show how funny I am unless you provide me with a few straight lines for comparison? I mean, seriously, it's like I'm talking to mysel-"

* * *

The com buzzed. Cid expected to hear Yuffie's voice, or perhaps Leon checking in to make sure they were doing everything to his exacting standards while he wasn't there to look over their shoulders. Damn kid had a stick up his butt all the way to the top of his spinal cord. Cid was all ready to bite off a reply so brutal it would singe Leon's nasal hair, and so was surprised when a very different, though no less familiar, voice came on the line.

"Cloud here."

"Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit," Cid exclaimed. "That was fast. Tifa only just landed herself and said you'd be dropping in on us sooner or –"

"You need to get out here."

Something in Cloud's tone alerted Cid that this wasn't just a call to say hello. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. "Where's here?"

"Wonder Fountain. Bring weapons."

Once the shining hub of Radiant Garden celebrations and festivals, now a dried-out husk of its former glory. Cid knew it well. "Wanna tell me what this is about, kid? Are we bein' attacked?"

"Not now."

Brevity was good in small doses, but sometimes a guy needed more details. Cid grunted irritably. "Then why the hell should I bring weapons?"

"Not just you. Everyone you can get mobilised. Especially Aerith. Now."

"Kid, start talking. If we ain't bein' attacked, what the fuck reason do you have for wanting everyone armed and out there?"

Cloud's reply said all too much and not nearly enough at the same time. "It's Yuffie. And it's bad."

* * *

_To Be Continued …_

* * *

.


	7. The Fight to Save Yuffie

.

* * *

**7. The Fight to Save Yuffie**

* * *

"_Yo, Squall."_

_He looks up to see Captain Fair coming towards him. His legs ache and his arms feel like lead weights after sword training all afternoon and chocobo schooling all morning, but his spines straightens and he snaps off a perfect salute._

"_At ease," Captain Fair chuckles. "You're not on duty, kid."_

"_Proper protocol is hard to forget, sir."_

"_I'll bet." Captain Fair sits and gestures next to him. "Cop a squat." _

"_Sir?"_

"_Sit, Squall. Or would you prefer me to call you Cadet Leonhart?"_

_They've been training outside as it's such a nice day, but the other students have dispersed to shower and enjoy a well-earned rest before dinner. He thought he'd wait until they finished before going inside himself, but the captain seems in no hurry. Gingerly he sits next him._

"_Geez, relax." Captain Fair turns his face into the sunlight and shuts his eyes. "Bask a little. You need to learn how to stop and smell the roses, kid."_

_His straight back hurts and his alms are sore, but he refuses to let anything show in his face and posture. "Sir?"_

"_How long have you wanted to be a Royal Guard?"_

_He thinks for maybe a microsecond. "I've always wanted to be a Guard, sir."_

"_Uh-huh. Tell me, Squall, have you ever kissed a girl?"_

_He nearly chokes on his own spit. "S-Sir?"_

"_It's a perfectly innocent – and relevant – question. How about dancing. Can you dance? Bowl? Play soccer? Sing? Burp the alphabet?"_

"_I'm not sure what you mean –"_

"_What I'm getting at, kid, is that you push yourself too hard. You're fixated. I can understand being passionate about what you do – I sure as hell enjoy my job – but you're only young, Squall." Captain Fair shakes his head and pushes hair from his face. "Listen to me. I sound like an old fart. I sound like the old farts I never used to listen to when I was a cadet! My point is, it's great to be passionate about training, and if you genuinely enjoy it, that's even better, but don't let it dominate everything else." He shoots him a narrow-eyed, sidelong glance that has more in it than just squinting from the sun. "Don't let someone else's dreams or plans dictate your own."_

_He thinks he understands what the captain is getting at. "I'm not doing this because of me father, sir."_

"_Maybe not. But you're letting your desire to be better than him get the better of **you**. Be careful, Squall. Figure out who you are before changing yourself to be someone else." He gets up, stretches and offers a hand. "There's plenty of time to be the best cadet we've ever had **after** you learn how to burp the alphabet."_

_It takes a second before he takes the captain's hand. His movements are stiff and he can't help giving another salute. "Yes, sir."_

_Captain Fair sighs. "Yeah. Uh, you're dismissed, I guess."_

_He leaves, but with a fresh nagging in his gut that wasn't there before._

* * *

Leon groaned softly and prised his eyes open. Right now it was a toss up between Heartless and headaches for which he hated more. Heartless were mean little beasts, but facing an army of them felt preferable to having his brain cooked from the inside out. The light hurt his eyes, and it took a second for him to orientate himself.

"What the –" He blinked, as if that would help. "Why am I outside?"

He thought back, remembering how Aerith had ordered him to bed instead of allowing him to patrol. He had done as she asked, but been unable to sleep. Eventually restlessness had driven him out of his room and along the ramparts, though he hadn't dared go further in case anyone found him and he had to endure another dose of being treated like a child as they ordered him back to bed. It wouldn't do any good in any case.

Rest hadn't eased his frenetic mind. Actually, the seemingly endless quiet had just let his thoughts turn in on themselves, eating their own tails until his vision swam. He couldn't just lie in bed and stew after visiting the dungeons. It was too significant an event. Pacing helped, and the breeze on the ramparts at least made him feel less suffocated, though as he leaned on a battlement and stared out across Radiant Garden, he couldn't help picturing the place in its heyday. A lot had changed since he was a cadet – out there, and inside himself. He wasn't the same person he'd been back then, and all of a sudden that had struck Leon as sad. He had wondered what type of person he might have been if things had gone as they were supposed to. Would he have eventually become Captain of the Royal Guard? Would he have grown up to get married and have a family of his own? He was late twenties now. His father and mother had been years younger than he was now when they married, and Leon had been a honeymoon baby. It was almost beyond his ken to imagine himself in their shoes. The way his life had actually turned out was so totally different, he could barely see that phantom version of himself, even in his imagination.

He levered himself to his feet, stretching his arms above his head, and stopped. A fragment of his dream came back to him with the movement. Captain Fair had stretched just like this.

He was distracted by movement from the courtyard below. He turned to get a better look, and saw Aerith and Cid hurrying across it. As he watched, Tifa caught up with them and exchanged a few words. Aerith took a steps backwards, but stop and nodded after a moment. Tifa scooped her into her arms and took off at a fantastic speed, bouncing from wall to wall using just her feet as Aerith hung tightly to her neck.

"Cid!" Leon yelled.

Cid looked around and then up. Leon couldn't see his face properly, but sensed something was wrong from his posture. Cid waved an arm, but that could have meant 'come here' or 'stay away'. Leon chose to think the former, glanced left and right along the rampaerts, and then vaulted the side. He caught behind himself, so he was leaning out precariously, braced both feet against the wall and launched out into empty air.

"Stupid kid – " he heard Cid squawk as he twisted and turned, exewcuting a series of jumps from gargoyle to gargoyle en route to the ground.

He landed, not heavily, but not lightly either. When he stood up his knees smarted. "What's up?"

"Not you!" Cid snarled. "Of all the stupid-ass, reckless, irresponsible stunt you ever pulled –"

"Where did Aerith and Tifa go?" Leon cut in.

Cid's shoulders drew up tight. "Got a call from Cloud. C'mon." Without elaborating further, Cid set off at a run himself.

Leon followed. "Cloud's back?"

Cid grunted. "Seems that way."

"Why didn't anyone come and tell me?"

"Had other things on our minds."

Leon frowned. "What aren't you telling me now?"

"I don't know details myself."

"Cid –"

A dark shape soared overhead. Leon's step faltered as he craned to look. Cloud in flight had that effect on people. You couldn't help staring, even if it meant running into a tree. Cloud swooped, and for an instant Leon saw his face, grimmer than even he remembered. Then Cloud veered back in the direction he'd come from, presumably to tell Tifa and Aerith they were on their way. Cid picked up his pace, despite already breathing hard. He was beginning to limp, too, his old injuries holding him back.

"Cid, what is going _on_?" Leon demanded. he knew better than to offer help. Cid would be insulted and just shrug him off.

"S'the brat," Cid panted.

"Yuffie?" This was like pulling teeth from a grumpy tiger. "What about her? Did she find something on patrol?"

"More like something found her."

"What?"

Leon wasn't stupid. Even so, it took him a few seconds to process what he saw when they crested a giant pile of rubble that used to be a wall. From the top they could see the tiered fountain that used to be Lord Ansem's pride and joy. It looked like a dilapidated staircase for giants now. On the middle step, arms pulled back on the horizontal surface and legs pressed flush to the vertical wall below, spin arched to screaming point, a figure had been staked out as if in some gruesome parody of Leon's own jump off the ramparts only minutes earlier. He could see the pools of red surrounding her hands and feet even from this distance. Her head lolled back, and both Tifa and Aerith crouched over her.

"YUFFIE!" The shout tore from Leon's throat unbidden.

"Oh shit," Cid wheezed. "Shitting shitty _shit_."

Leon skidded down the other side of the rubble, scree tumbling around and behind him. Cid followed at a slower rate, more circumspect about finding his footing. Leon could have fallen on his face and barely registered the pain. He slipped and slid, and finally ran the last distance, but pulled up short at the bottom of the lowest stone tier.

"Her spine," he heard Tifa gasp. "Oh my god, her _spine_."

Aerith said something. The glow of her healing magic radiated from a point he couldn't see. For a moment Leon considered trying to scramble up like a puppy on a flight of stairs. He even backed off to get a running jump at it. He stopped when Cloud appeared next to him. He braced the air with flaps of his single bat-like wing, hovering scant feet off the ground. It should have been impossible on several levels, but Cloud was good at accomplishing the impossible.

"Can you get me up there?" Leon demanded.

Maddeningly, Cloud didn't reply except to say, "You don't want to see."

"Damn it, Cloud!"

Cloud shot him a sidelong look and somehow tipped his body forward so he could hook his hands under Leon's armpits. Leon braced himself for the inevitable jerk as Cloud lifted him into the air. It didn't occur to him until later that Cloud had never carried him before. Cloud rarely touched _anyone_.

Getting a bird's-eye-view didn't help. What he could see of Yuffie was awful. The blood pools seemed huge and every scrap of skin on show was paler than normal. Red streaked the stonework from her feet, which he could now see had been pinned in place by her own kunai. Someone had rammed them in with enough force to spider-web the stone beneath with cracks. Leon felt sick, in a way he never had when battling Heartless or Nobodies.

This place. It had to be this place; this whole stinking world. It was tainted. It always had been, they'd just refused to see it every time. During Lord Ansem's tenure it had been hidden, but now they had no excuse. Nobody had hidden the taint when they returned and gave Hollow Bastion back its old name. They had just blinded themselves to it in their desperation to go home. Maleficent had sensed it, though. That must have been why she made this world her stronghold even though she wasn't from here. This place was evil, and it was where evil things happened. When were they going to learn from their mistakes and accept the obvious? They never should have come back.

"C'mon, Yuffie," Tifa muttered. "Don't you dare die on us."

Aerith looked awful, but gamely fed her power into the wounds to heal them. Leon could now see the slashes strafing Yuffie's torso, staining the fabric almost black with blood. She looked dead already. Aerith's hands pressed on her chest as if trying to restart her heart, except that she didn't move them. The contact was a way of help her focus when she was waning, Leon knew.

Finally Aerith sat back on her heels. "The kunai are stanching the bleeding," she panted. "But we can't move her to the Infirmary with them still in like this. They need to come out and I need to cauterise the wounds immediately."

"Do you have enough energy left?" Tifa asked.

"I'll cope," Aerith said simply.

Tifa looked up, shading her eyes. "A little help, guys?" Her words were flippant; her tone anything but. "We're gonna need a med-evac, pronto." She glanced at Aerith meaningfully.

By Leon's ear, Cloud grunted. It might have been meaningful too, or it would have just been an ordinary grunt. With Cloud you could never be sure. "I have to put you down." Without waiting for a reply he landed next to the girls. "Do you want me to extract those?" he asked, gesturing to the kunai.

Tifa gave him a funny look. "I know you're used to pulling all sorts of weapons out of yourself," she said, "but I'll handle this. You just get ready to move your tail. You take Yuffie to the castle. I'll follow with Aerith."

Cloud nodded. Even in the midst of his panic, Leon sensed their strange rapport. 'Strained' barely covered the tension between them, but they also shared a kind of kinship that crackled like static electricity in the air; a wordless communication that might have made him jealous ten years ago.

Aerith drew a breath. "She's stable for now, but we have to hurry. She's going into shock."

Tifa braced herself above Yuffie's head, but then paused. "This isn't going to work. Cloud, you have to be by her feet. I can't pull those out and catch her without jolting her more than she can afford."

Again, Cloud nodded. He stationed himself in the air just in front of Yuffie, planted his feet on the wall and grasped a kunai in either hand. "Ready?"

"Three, two, one –" Tifa pulled. The kunai embedded between the tendons of Yuffie's hands came free with two wet crunches. Two more signalled Cloud had done the same. "Now, Aerith!"

But Aerith was already working. A golden blossom had opened above them and was now raining what looked like fireflies on their heads. Just before any reached them, however, Aerith muttered under her breath and they were sucked aside, like water swirling down a plughole. Four funnels of magical energy aimed for Yuffie's hands and feet. For a moment the veins and arteries around her wounds glowed gold, and then red, before fading. Yuffie didn't open her eyes, but the four stab wounds were at least closed now. A network of gray lines spiralled down her arms and legs. She flopped forward into Cloud's waiting arms.

Aerith was breathing hard. "Go." She waved a hand at him. He frowned at her. "Go!" she insisted.

"We'll catch up," Tifa assured him.

Cloud didn't say a word, but turned in mid-air and flew off.

Aerith tried to get to her feet, but her knees had turned to water. Tifa had to help her, pulling one arm around her shoulder and hooking her own arm around Aerith's waist. Leon took a hesitant step towards them, but stopped. He felt suddenly useless.

"You overdid it," Tifa said. She wasn't speaking to him.

"I'm fine," Aerith replied, and then corrected herself. "I'll be fine. I just need to rest a little while. Yuffie's stable for now, but I need to heal her properly. That was just a hack-job to stop her bleeding out. It won't last." She bit her bottom lip. Leon wondered if she even realised she was doing it. "She's lost a lot of blood, but that's not what concerns me most."

Leon remembered what Tifa had been saying when he arrived. "Her spine?"

Both girls looked at him, as if only then remembering he was there. Leon couldn't remember the last time he felt so small and incompetent.

"It's not natural to be bent that way," Tifa said in the manner of someone wondering how technical she could get before he stopped understanding what she was saying.

"Actually, I meant the cuts on her stomach," Aerith interrupted. "Those were … someone _did_ that to her." She was trembling. Leon couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion, fear, anger, or something else. "They cut her up and staked her out here like a … a dead pig in a farmyard."

Tifa pulled her closer, ostensibly to readjust her hold and make it more secure. "C'mon," she said, her tone conciliatory. "No time to waste."

"Hurry, Tifa," Aerith said as she was scooped up again. "Leon," she added before Tifa took off, "my books. I left some in the kitchen. Bring them to the Infirmary, please. I think I might need them in this. It's … bigger than I've done before." She was biting her lip again. "This wasn't a Heartless attack. This wasn't anything _like_ the Heartless."

"I'll bring them," Leon assured her. "Go."

They went.

Cid was standing at the foot of the fountain. "Fucking fuck," he swore when Leon landed next to him. "That bad?"

Leon could only nod and start running again.

Cid glanced at the top and followed, breathing hard. "I'm gettin' too old for this shit."

* * *

Aerith pressed her hands against Yuffie's midsection. Her eyes were closed as she used her other senses to seek out hidden injuries. What you could see was often not the worst of it when dealing with the victim of an attack. She had healed warriors before after they'd been fighting – sometimes when they were still in the middle of it, as in the case of the Battle of the Thousand Heartless – but this wasn't like that. There was a cruelty here that turned her stomach.

She broke off, panting. Her stomach really did turn over. She felt a hand on her back and looked up to see Tifa. She gave her friend a wan smile. "I'm okay."

Tifa was grim. "No you're not."

"Yuffie's worse," she said before Tifa could say more. There was no argument against that. Aerith had to keep working or Yuffie would die.

The door opened. "I've got the books," Leon announced. He came towards them but not too close, looking for a place to put the books down until the sight of Yuffie on the examining table made him freeze. His face hardened. Aerith had seen Leon grim before, but this was different. Now he looked positively murderous.

"Bring them here," she said to distract him. The Infirmary had a lectern with a second lower shelf the old healers used to use when making notes on unusual or interesting cases. Maybe these very books had been written here. She hoped they had something she could use.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry." Leon set them down and backed off. "Where's Cloud?"

"He went to look for whoever was responsible," Tifa answered.

"Can I … is there anything I can do?"

"Pray." Aerith lifted off the top book to get at the one she wanted. This kind of operation required precision she wasn't used to. Stitching up her friends after battle and curing illness was far different than the kind of accuracy Yuffie's wounds demanded. This would mean long stretches of intense concentration and using a lot of power. Now, more than ever, Aerith wished she'd had time to complete her training. She found the book she wanted and opened it to the chapter she had been reading earlier. Drawing her finger down several pages, she finally found the passage she wanted. Then she took up a scalpel and brought it towards her own face.

"Aerith!" Tifa cried.

"What are you _doing_?" Leon demanded.

"Shush." Aerith grasped her ponytail with her other hand. The scalpel had been sharpened with magic and so, with one quick, clean slice, she was able to cut through her ponytail. The thick mass of hair came away in her hand. "Tifa, get me a ceramic bowl from the top cupboard and a box of matches from the glass cabinet to your left."

"Why-?" Tifa stopped herself, realising now what not the time to question the healer. "Right." She fetched the items and set them on the counter that ran around the edge of the room. "Anything else?"

"Yes. Stand back."

Yuffie's breathing was laboured and all too loud. Aerith tore the flyleaf from the book. It was dry and would burn quickly. She lit a match and dropped both into the bowl, then held her severed ponytail over the flames. She couldn't be sentimental now. Even so, it was an effort to open her fist and drop her hair into the bowl to burn. She inhaled the smoke, shut her eyes and opened her sixth sense once more. She wasn't sure what she expected: a fizzle in her veins, perhaps, or a rush like going up in an elevator too fast. It was nothing like that. Her heat beat faster and her healer sense expanded. She went to Yuffie and set to work.

"There's an old ritual," she explained, knowing Tifa and Leon were wondering why she had done that. "You can get a quick power boost from sacrificing body parts. Unscrupulous sorcerers made human sacrifices, but the intent behind any gesture is key in magic. It's not the act itself, but the meaning behind it that makes it effective. That kind of negative magic is toxic if you want to use it for positive purposes. Hair, teeth, nails – anything like that absorbs magic from a person. Hair is the easiest and least destructive to use. The longer you've been growing it, the more magic it has absorbed, and the bigger the power boost. It's not permanent, or ideal, but for what I need to do it seemed the best way. My hair has twenty-two years worth of magic in it."

"You … really need that much power?" Leon asked, but Aerith heard the question underneath that: _Yuffie's injuries are really that bad?_

"She's in a critical condition," Aerith said. "I have to focus now."

Both he and Tifa fell silent.

Aerith worked as hard as she could. She reached deeper and deeper, both into Yuffie and into herself. She wished magic was as easy as just waving a wand and saying a few special words. Like life itself, magic was about balance. Every death was replaced by a new life, every piece of bad luck offset by some good fortune, and every cruelty counterbalanced by a kindness somewhere in the world. In magic, for everything you took, you had to give something back, and everything you used had to be replaced and replenished. Aerith's healing wasn't free, but usually she could rely on her own energy.

Yuffie's life force was fading. Aerith went after it. It was like diving into molasses to bring back a spoonful of rice. The grains were sinking at different rates, growing further apart the deeper they sank. If they stretched too far apart the fragile bonds of Yuffie's soul would break and she would die. Aerith couldn't let that happen. She grabbed blindly, found a shard and held on, using its energy signature to find the other shards. She called to them and felt them answer, weakly.

She wasn't finished when the boost began to fade. She felt it when she started eating into her own power reserves again. If she went too far, she would hit her own life force and start using that too. Some healers burned out that way. They tried to do too much and kept the magical balance too literally, paying for one saved life with the sacrifice of their own. Aerith gritted her teeth and focussed on Yuffie's flickering life force rather than the nearness of her own. If she let go now the shards would scatter. She had to hang on. She had to … reach … a little … further …

Suddenly she was suffused with energy. Her eyes flew open. Where had it come from?

Tifa stood next to the smoking bowl, the scalpel in her hand. Her hair barely reached past her ears. As Aerith watched, Leon took the blade and raised it to his own hair.

"No, wait!" she panted. "Not too much too fast. I'll overload and make a mistake." Leon paused and she nodded. "I'll tell you if I need another boost."

The healing wasn't simple, but it was easier now. Somehow, Tifa's help and Leon's readiness to do likewise gave her strength that was nothing to do with magic. Her power blossomed above her, casting the room in an unearthly glow. Aerith's face felt warm. She felt for Yuffie's consciousness, massaging it like a heart that had stopped beating.

_Come back to us, Yuffie. Come back from the edge. Your body is all ready for you. Return to it. Come back. Come back, please …_

And then, finally, the shards came together. The flicker became a proper flame. Aerith felt her lungs expand. She realised she had been holding her breath. Her chest ached and her throat was tight and sore, but she was also elated. She had done all she could. The rest was up to Yuffie and nature.

"Aerith!" Leon shouted.

Arms caught her. Aerith realised belatedly that her knees had given out. Apparently she had used enough of her own energy to be too weak to stand up. She looked up into Leon's face and smiled.

"Sorry."

"What the hell are you apologising for? You just saved Yuffie's life." He blinked. "You're crying."

"Am I?" Aerith touched her cheeks. They were wet. Funny; she didn't feel like crying. She felt like laughing. She felt like laughing a _lot_. Maybe that was hysteria. She should probably lie down for a while. That level of healing with her level of skill had wiped her out. "I need to rest, but I don't want to leave her." She gestured at the door in the wall. It led to a small anteroom lined with cots where patients recovered when this was a working medical facility. "It's okay to lift Yuffie as long as you're gentle. She's still fragile, but she won't break. Put us both in there. That way I can keep an eye on her."

Tifa carried Yuffie and she and Leon set them down in cots next to each other. Aerith's eyes started to close the moment her head met the pillow. She struggled to keep them open.

"Wait!"

"We're not going anywhere," Tifa said, pulling up a chair. "What is it, Aerith?"

"Thank you."

Tifa smiled. It made Aerith's heart twist in her chest. Somewhere out there Cloud was looking for Yuffie's attacker. Having him so close, being here with Tifa and knowing what she knew … Aerith's own smile wavered, and not just from exhaustion.

"I'm just glad I could help," Tifa assured her. "Now you get some rest. You look worn out."

Aerith fell back and went gratefully to sleep.

* * *

_**To be Continued ...**_

* * *

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End file.
